From the days of the floppy disk, the portability of data and programs has been an important aspect of computing. Today we are looking at the latest external Solid State drive from ADATA – the DashDrive Elite SE720 128GB.

When we received this device into the KitGuru Labs, one question came to mind: Is it worth trading the lower price and performance of a larger, traditional external hard drive for the much faster, more expensive, designer approach offered by an external solid state drive?

Back at the start of November 2013, we reviewed the HE720 DashDrive Elite, a 1TB product that ADATA managed to fit inside a brushed stainless steel chassis that was less than 9mm thick. At the time of going to press, the 1TB ADATA HE720 was £88 on Amazon.

The new Solid State version (SE720) offers 128GB of storage, in almost exactly the same chassis.

The SE720 is lighter, 160 grams vs 259 grams against the HE720. Packed in a bag or sitting on a desk you will never notice the additional weight, but if you plan to tuck your data device into your shirt pocket, then the solid state flash version will deliver less strain on your stitching.

Here are the basic technical specifications:-

be quiet!’s Dark Rock series of coolers has fared well in a fearsome market. In previous generations, a strong balance between noise output and cooling performance has made them desirable products. Can the German company repeat its success with version three of the dual-tower Dark Rock Pro CPU cooler?

Fastening a pair of the company’s highly-regarded SilentWings fans to a sizable dual-tower heatsink, be quiet! is aiming to win over enthusiasts with the Dark Rock Pro 3’s silent operation and worthy cooling performance.  And speaking of cooling performance, be quiet! rates the Dark Rock Pro 3 for up to 250W of heat dissipation.

With seven 6mm heatpipes, wave contour aluminium cooling fins, vibration-isolating elements, and a dark black finish, does the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 offer the balanced performance that will make it sought-after to enthusiasts and gamers?

Specifications:

• CPU Socket Compatibility: Intel LGA 775, 1150, 1155, 1156, 1366, 2011 & AMD 754, 939, 940, AM2(+), AM3 (+), FM1, FM2 (+)
• Heatsink Dimensions (L x W x H): 150 x 137 x 163 mm
  
• Heatsink Material: Aluminium fins
• Base Material: Copper
• Fan Speed (120mm): up to 1700 RPM
• Fan Air Flow (120mm): up to 57.2 CFM
• Fan Air Pressure (120mm): up to 1.23 mm H2O
• Fan Speed (135mm): up to 1400 RPM
• Fan Air Flow (135mm): up to 67.8 CFM
• Fan Air Pressure (135mm): up to 2.1 mm H2O
• Fan Connectors: 4-pin PWM (inc. built-in splitter)
• Warranty: 3 years.

Case and power supply maker, Cougar, has launched a new line up of PSUs, known as thee GX V3 series, featuring high efficiency, a small form factor and modular cabling, so along with not ramping up your electric bill, it won’t take up too much space in your chassis either.

Efficiency and environmental considerations are the name of the game with the new V3s, since not only are they rated 80 Plus Gold for efficiency, with a peak efficiency of 93 per cent, but they comply with new Eco-Friendly EuP regulation and support the Energy Star 5.0 rating. This means that when in standby, its energy usage is as low as 0.3 watts.

There’s also a lot of gold styling, and you know what that means: they used gold paint on it. 

Available in 600, 800 and 1050 watt variants, the V3s also pack modular cabling, a large 140mm fan for cooling and 105 degrees Celsius rated Japanese capacitors, to ensure a long life of the unit. However, a cool unit and efficient unit is also a stable one, and the V3s are designed with that in mind too. While we’ll still hold out to give the final verdict with our own testing, the Cougar PR rates its ripple/noise at less than one per cent.

US pricing is confirmed at $189 for the 1050w variant, $149 for the 800 watter and $109 for the smaller 600w unit. No UK pricing has been confirmed as of yet, but you can learn more on the main Cougar product page.

KitGuru Says: Anyone in the market for a new PSU? 

Today we are going to take a look at the latest case from Cougar, the MX500. This particular model has been designed for those users looking for a well featured case that is still affordable. We look forward to examining the extent to which this is true and if it truly represents good value for money.

Cougar specifically target their range of products towards gamers, particularly those who are operating with limited budgets. We have looked at a number of Cougar cases in the past and have been generally impressed with the features they offer for the money.

The last case we looked at from Cougar was the Challenger which we reviewed over here. We scored this down for the lack of cable management offers and the rather unusual design. It will be interesting to see if Cougar have improved these aspects with the MX500.

Features

• Sleek modernistic look with hair-lined surface front panel design
• Superior capacity for longer high-end graphics cards up to 300mm, 330mm & 410mm. (depending on varies graphics cards requirement to change position with HDD bracket)
• Best ventilation solution and support for 7 fans
• Lots of room for cable feedthrough on the MB tray for easy routing and hiding cables, and provide a better airflow and neatness of system building
• Advanced dual USB3.0 for maximum data transfer speed
• 7 PCI slots provide flexibility for multiple graphics cards solutions
• Screw-less mechanisms on 5.25’’devices
• 3.5’’HDD trays x 7 (compatible for installing 2.5’’HDDs/SSDs x 7)
• Provide 2.5’’HDD trays x 3 (depending on the graphics cards length)
• Installation opening in the MB tray for easy upgrade CPU cooler
• Vented slot bezels for better cooling performance
• Removable air filters on the bottom cover & side cover to prevent dust from entering the enclosure. (Magnet filters are easy to remove and clean)
• High quality and game-style interior black coating

If you have a camera or smartphone that is constantly running out of storage space, forcing you to swap out for another card, then Sandisk’s latest release will be right up your street. It’s a new, record breaking microSD card, with a whopping 128GB capacity.

Designed with Android tablets and smartphones in-mind, the new Sandisk Ultra card is microSDXC compiant and therefore faster than your average microSD solution. “The new SanDisk Ultra microSDXC card again demonstrates how SanDisk continues to expand the possibilities of storage so that consumers can benefit from our latest technology advancements,” said Susan Park, director, retail product marketing, SanDisk. “With 128GB of removable storage, consumers will enjoy the freedom to capture and save whatever they want on a smartphone or tablet, without worrying about running out of storage space.”

It’s also X-Ray proof, waterproof and shock proof 
To achieve this impressive storage capacity, Sandisk developed a manufacturing technique that vertically stacks the memory dies that make up the SD card’s backbone, each memory chip thinner than a human hair.

Announced and debuted at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, the new microSDXC UHS-I card from Sandisk, will retail at $150 in the US. UK pricing has yet to be announced.

KitGuru Says: 128GB is more than most people will need, but for professional photographers or HD video producers, it’ll be the perfect addition for any hardware that can’t stream to a networked hard drive. 

Today we take a look at one of the most cost effective 1000W Platinum power supplies currently available – the creamy white Super Flower Leadex. The Leadex Platinum is currently available from Overclockers UK for £169.99 inc vat, on offer this week at only £149.99 inc vat.

As well as achieving Platinum efficiency, the unit is fully modular and is equipped with six 6+2 SATA cables to power demanding Crossfire and SLi configurations. Is it worth the asking price?

Features

• 100% Full Modular Cabling Design For Easy Cable Management
• 80 PLUS ® Platinum Certified, 91.12% 92.53% 91.11% Efficiency At 20% 50% 100% Rated Load
• Full Range Auto Voltage Detection Design 100V~240V (Active PFC)
• Comply With ATX 12V. V2.2, EPS 12V. V2.91 & SSI EPS 12V. V2.92 Specification
• Comply With Energy Star Standard & EuP (Energy Using Products) Regulation
• Over Voltage Protection / Over Current Protection / Over Power Protection / Short Circuit Protection / Under Voltage Protection
• Support All Intel/AMD Multi-Core CPU & ATX/BTX Compatible Motherboards
• Support NVIDIA® SLI™ & ATI CrossFireX™ High Performance Graphic Card
• Patented Easy To Use & Install Crystal Clear Cube Connectors with LED
• More than 2,000 times On/Off test
• Unleaded Green Materials with RoHS/WEEE Compliance
• Perfect For Professional & High Performance Gaming System

When it comes to branding, the KFA2 products are no shrinking violets. Distinctive graphics and some very moody characters on the posters seem to promise pixel punishment in a grimy, street savvy way. But cool packaging only get you so far. Increasing sales needs proactive distribution. KitGuru examines changes to KFA2′s channel.

Originally founded in 1994, Galaxy is one of those manufacturers that produce a serious volume of cards, but which are often sold under various brands into different markets across the globe. For the performance market, the brand Galaxy has chosen is KFA2 and the products are – as the name would suggest – aiming to ‘Kick Friggin Ass’ for gamers.

Since deciding to work with ex-AMD graphic guru Craig Connell, KFA2 has been going from strength to strength in the UK market and it has now decided to increase its distribution presence by appointing Target Components.

Speaking exclusively to KitGuru, Target’s head of online product marketing, Cory Lees, said “Our appointment as KFA2′s Official UK Distributor is great news particularly for our customers. Local gaming specialists can now offer greater value and, more importantly, a fantastic range of factory-overclocked Nvidia graphics cards”.

“Not only do they have a unique look with their custom PCBs and fans, but they also have the capability to outperform even the best-known brands. They have online end-user support, based in the UK and these KFA2 cards come with a 2-year warranty as standard, giving end-users peace-of mind”, said Cory.

This appointment gets KFA2 cards into plenty more stores across the UK, but what if gamers want KFA2 inside pre-built systems?

Cory explained, “The KFA2 range has also been added to our Custom PC Builder and In-Store Custom PC Builder, giving resellers and end-users several thousand more PC build options”.

The ‘Builder’ that Cory is referring to is Target’s unique system builder tool, designed to help gamers get the perfect specification by engaging with a purpose built program when they visit their local computer store.

Cory looks pleased with the new appointment.

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KitGuru says: Following the recent positive news for nVidia from the latest Jon Peddie reports, it seems that expansion is the name of the game as KFA2 targets an even larger audience or hard core gamers.

Comment below, in the KitGuru forums or join around 170,000 fellow technology enthusiasts over at Facebook.

Intel Corp. on Monday introduced its new Atom Z3400-series system-on-chip code-named “Merrifield” designed for smartphones and tablets. The new application processor is powered by the latest low-power Silvermont micro-architecture, features Imagination Technologies PowerVR 6-series “Rogue” graphics and integrates a host of promising technologies.

Intel Atom Z3400-series “Merrifield” SoC features two 64-bit x86 “Silvermont” cores with Hyper-Threading technology, Imagination Technologies PowerVR G6400 graphics engine (with four compute clusters), dual-channel LPDDR3 memory controller, integrated co-processor designed for managing sensor data, new video processor with support for all modern codecs including VP9 and H.265 (HEVC), new image signal processor with up to 13MP camera support and so on. Intel’s Atom Z3400-series chip will rely on Intel XMM 7160 multi-band multi-mode 4G/LTE modem with support up to 15 LTE bands (up to 150Mb/s download/50Mb/s upload speed) as well as third-party Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chips.

The new Atom “Merrifield” is one of the first system-on-chips compatible with 64-bit Google Android operating system. Intel has developed its own Android kernel that takes advantage of its Silvermont micro-architecture and other peculiarities.

“Sixty-four bit computing is moving from the desktop to the mobile device,” said Renee James, the president of Intel. “Intel knows 64-bit computing, and we’re the only company currently shipping 64-bit processors supporting multiple operating systems today, and capable of supporting 64-bit Android when it is available.”

Intel expects Atom Z3400-series Merrifield-based devices from multiple OEMs to launch beginning in the second quarter.

Intel on Monday also disclosed plans to offer quad-core Atom Z-series “Moorefield” system-on-chip for smartphones and tablets later this year.

Asustek Computer, Dell and Lenovo have confirmed plans to use Intel Atom Z3400-series SoCs. Foxconn, the world’s largest contract producer of electronics, will also utilise Intel’s mobile chips for tablets this year.

KitGuru Says: While the Merrifield chip looks promising and very powerful even for high-end smartphones, it may still not win a lot of contracts with device makers. The main reason is the fact that the Atom Z3400-series does not feature integrated communication capabilities: manufacturers will have to separately acquire XMM 7160 modem as well as Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chips, which makes design of their products more complex and expensive. Nonetheless, thanks to low-power consumption and high-end features, Atom Z3400 may become a popular solution for media tablets as well as high-end smartphones.

Although Advanced Micro Devices has been adding free games to its desktop add-on graphics cards for some time now, its market share continues to significantly trail that of Nvidia. According to recently released data from Jon Peddie Research, when it comes to discrete desktop graphics processing units (GPUs), Nvidia continues to outsell AMD by millions of units and has been doing so for years now.

Jon Peddie Research claims that the total available market of desktop add-in-boards (AIBs) in Q4 2013 was around 15 million units, which was only 3 per cent higher compared to the previous quarter. Moreover, the attach rate of AIBs to desktop PCs has dropped from a high of 63 per cent in Q1 2008 to 42.8 per cent in Q4 2013 (which was even lower than 43.4 per cent in Q3 2013). A good news for the market is that sales of dual-GPU graphics cards as well as adoption of multi-GPU configurations increased in the Q4 2013, reports JPR.

Shipments of AMD Radeon graphics cards for desktop decreased 3 per cent in Q4 2013 compared to the previous quarter, according to JPR. By contrast, Nvidia’s quarter-to-quarter desktop GPU unit shipments increased 3.6 per cent. Nvidia continued to hold a dominant market share position at nearly 65 per cent. By contrast, AMD shipped 35 per cent of discrete desktop graphics processors.

While the market of desktop discrete graphics cards is virtually controlled by AMD and Nvidia, companies like Matrox Graphics and S3 Graphics continue to ship standalone GPUs, albeit, in very small quantities, according to findings of JPR. In total, there are around 51 suppliers of add-in graphics cards worldwide.

KitGuru Says: The reasons why AMD cannot capture a significant chunk of the market away from Nvidia is completely unclear. When Nvidia GeForce could offer higher performance across the board, then the AMD Radeon was naturally less popular. But while now there is performance parity between competing solutions, higher popularity of the GeForce cannot be easily explained.

Earlier this month Nvidia released their new Maxwell based GTX 750 Ti graphics card, and we were on hand to review the excellent MSI Twin Frozr solution on launch day. Today we take a look at another Nvidia partner card, the Palit GTX 750 Ti StormX Dual, featuring a substantial core and memory clock increase and custom dual fan cooler. Is it worthy of a shortlist?

The new Palit GTX 750 Ti is a modified design featuring dual fans and an extended plastic shroud.


Palit have decided to overclock their solution extensively, increasing the core clock speed from 1,020mhz to 1,202mhz. The GDDR5 memory also receives a large clock bump, increased from the reference card speeds of 1,250mhz to 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective). This should give a noticeable speed increase over both the Nvidia reference solution, and the MSI Twin Frozr card, which was clocked at a more modest 1,085mhz.

The Nvidia reference card is using 2GB of Hynix GDDR5 memory, but like MSI, Palit have opted for Samsung branded GDDR5.

The Maxwell SM architecture delivers improved efficiency and 35% more performance per CUDA core on shader limited workloads. Nvidia have changed the architecture with the SM scheduler architecture and algorithms having been rewritten to avoid stalling and further reducing the energy per instruction required for scheduling. Maxwell SM architecture enabled Nvidia to increase the number of SM’s to five in GM107, compared to two in GK107 – and all with only a 25% increase in die area.

Nvidia have explained that the organisation of the SM has been changed. Each SM has been partitioned into four separate processing blocks, each with their own instruction buffer, scheduler and 32 CUDA cores. GK107 Kepler could have a non power of two number of CUDA cores, with some shared. The new partitioning simplifies the design and scheduling logic which reduces computation latency and saves area and power demand.

Pairs of processing blocks share four texture filtering units and a texture cache. The L1 compute cache function is now combined with the texture cache function and shared memory is a separate unit, shared across all four blocks. Each Maxwell SM is smaller than a Kepler SM but delivers around 90% of the performance. The smaller area means that Nvidia can incorporate many more SM’s per GPU. The GM107 (v GK107) has 25 percent more texture performance, 1.7 times more CUDA cores and 2.3 greater shader performance.

Nvidia have improved Video capabilities with the latest hardware. Maxwell incorporates an improved NVENC block to deliver faster encode performance over Kepler – 6-8 times real time compared against 4 times. Nvidia report a 8-10 times faster decode rate too. Maxwell also has a new GC5 power state designed to drop the GPU power demand under light workload situations – such as when playing back video.

Qualcomm this week introduced its new performance-mainstream Snapdragon 600-series system-on-chips for smartphones and tablets. The new SoCs feature ARMv8 64-bit processing technology, 4G/LTE connectivity as well as new-generation Adreno graphics. The new chips will be used inside devices due late this year.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 610, 615 application processors integrate four (up to 1.80GHz) and eight (four 1.0GHz + four 1.80GHz) ARM Cortex-A53 cores, respectively. Both system-on-chips feature new-generation Adreno 405 graphics processing unit (which supports mobile graphics APIs like DirectX 11.2 and Open GL ES3.0, full profile OpenCL 1.1 as well as hardware accelerated geometry shading and hardware tessellation), LPDDR3 memory controller, new display controller (with up to 2560*2048 resolution support), improved multimedia processors (with H.265 codec support), Wi-Fi 802.11ac controller, Bluetooth 4.1 controller, GPS/GLONASS, Gobi 4G/LTE cat 4 modem for speeds up to 150Mb/s (supports LTE FDD, LTE TDD, WCDMA, CDMA1x, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM) and so on.

“Qualcomm Technologies is redefining the user experience for high-end mobile devices by amassing the unparalleled trilogy of an industry-leading LTE modem, 64-bit multicore processing, and superior multimedia,” said Murthy Renduchintala, executive vice president of Qualcomm Technologies.

It is noteworthy that so far Qualcomm has only introduced 64-bit application processors for mobile devices with ARM Cortex-A53 cores, but not higher-end ARM Cortex-A57 cores. Moreover, the company still has not introduced its own implementation of ARMv8 architecture. Keeping in mind that the performance-mainstream SoCs utilize ARM Cortex-A53 cores, we can expect the next-gen Snapdragon 810/815 to feature up to eight Cortex-A57, which will deliver much higher performance per core and enable capabilities never-before-seen on mobile devices.

The Snapdragon 610 and 615 processors are anticipated to begin sampling in the third quarter of 2014 and the first commercial devices are expected in the fourth quarter of 2014.

KitGuru Says: The new Snapdragon 600-series application processors are rather impressive thanks to 64-bit technology, new-generation graphics engine as well as other capabilities. It is a little bit sad that the first products based on the Snapdragon 610 and 615 will only emerge late this year. Keeping such launch schedule in mind, the new high-end Snapdragon 810/815 application processors from Qualcomm will be available even later…

If your’e a fan of 8Pack, or overclocking in general, you might want to tune in to OCUK’s new Twitch channel, as the ex-personal trainer is trying to break a new 4X GPU world record right now. He’s using liquid nitrogen, ridiculously overclocked hardware and the most basic mouse you’ve seen outside of an estate agent.

“Nobody makes fun of my mouse. Nobody.”

Watch live video from overclockers_uk on www.twitch.tv

8Pack and his partner in crime, Hivisman, have four AMD 290X GPUs screaming away under crossfire while being cooled by liquid nitrogen, which you can see them top up every now and again via the stream. It’s an impressive set up and the results look likely to be too.

Kitguru Says: You do have to laugh at the contrast though. You have some of the most powerful and expensive hardware in the world, two of the biggest world record holding overclockers and a company that has access to the best of the best hardware. And the mouse is a generic optical.

Although Samsung Electronics was expected to unveil its first 64-bit ARMv8-compatible application processors at the Mobile World Congress 2014, so far the firm has only introduced two new Exynos 5-series system-on-chips. The processors offer increased performance amid optimized power consumption and up-to-date feature-set.

The new high-end Exynos Octa 5422 is equipped with eight cores that work in Big.Little HMP [heterogeneous multi-processing] configuration: four big ARM Cortex- A15 (up to 2.1GHz) cores and four small ARM Cortex-A7 (up to 1.50GHz) cores for heavy loads and lighter jobs, respectively. The new SoC also features advanced multi format codec (MFC) block that is capable of encoding/decoding video in 4K (3840*2160) UHD resolution and supports high-resolution displays, such as WQHD (2560*1440) and WQXGA (2560*1600). Since the chip is essentially an improved version of the Exynos 5420, it features the same ARM Mali-T628 graphics engine.

To support high-resolution displays requiring a higher rate of data processing and bandwidth, Samsung has adopted proprietary mobile image compression (MIC) and adaptive hibernation (detects non-moving parts of dynamic images and freezes the data transfer) technologies. With MIC, display data is compressed into half to minimize memory bandwidth requirement and uses only four MIPI lanes. Both technologies are implemented in conjunction with Samsung’s mobile display driver IC (S6E3HA0 for WQHD and S6E3FA2 for FHD respectively), and save power consumption by up to 10 per cent compared with conventional technologies.

The Exynos Octa 5422 delivers up to 34% higher performance compared to previous-generation Exynos Octa solutions and consumes 10% less power since it is made using thinner 28nm process technology.

Samples of the processor are available now and scheduled for mass production in the first quarter of 2014.

Another interesting addition to the Exynos family is Exynos 5 Hexa (Exynos 5260), which offers a balance between performance, power consumption and cost. The Exynos 5260 sports six general-purpose cores that also work in HMP mode: two ARM Cortex-A15 (up to 1.70GHz) and four ARM Cortex-A7 (up to 1.30GHz). The chip continues to rely on ARM Mali-T628 graphics engine, but sports up to 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth and up to WQXGA (2560*1600) display resolution. While the chip sports a video codec that enables Full HD (1080p) playback at up to 60 frames-per-second (fps) with encoding and decoding of various standards, such as H.264, MPEG4 and VP8, it does not support 4K playback or H.265 codec.

The Exynos Hexa 5260 is currently in mass production.

High-end and mid-range devices based on the new Exynos 5 Octa and Exynos 5 Hexa are expected to emerge later this year.

KitGuru Says: While both Exynos 5 Octa and Exynos 5 Hexa seem to be enough for today’s high-end smartphones and tablets, what is truly interesting to see is what Samsung plans for tomorrow. In particular, we are eager to see specifications of Samsun’s next-gen high-end SoC with 64-bit cores and next-gen graphics.

HGST, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., on Wednesday introduced one of the world’s highest-performing hard disk drive (HDD). The new Ultrastar enterprise-class storage solution boasts with 15K revolutions per minute spindle speed as well as Serial Attached SCSI 12Gb/s interface.

HGST Ultrastar C15K600 hard disk drives are available in 300GB, 450GB and 600GB capacities and are based on two or three platters. The drives feature 15K rpm spindle speed, 128MB cache, SAS-12Gb/s interface. Operating power consumption of the HDDs is 7W (a 55 per cent improvement over 3.5” 15K HDDs), active idle power consumption varies from 5W to 5.8W (a 54 per cent improvement over 3.5” 15K HDDs). The Ultrastar C15K600 family will be offered in 512e, 512n and 4K advanced format.

The Ultrastar C15K600 hard drives are designed enterprise workloads like on-line transaction processing and intensive data analytics. To achieve its extreme performance, the C15K600 utilizes several technologies, including HGST’s media caching technology, which provides a large caching mechanism for incoming data resulting in significantly enhanced write performance over solutions with limited NAND or flash-based non-volatile cache (NVC). The result is two times better random write performance than current generation 2.5” 15K drives, and two and a half times better performance than 3.5” 15K drives, according to HGST. At present, the C15K600 is the only 2.5” hard drive to utilize SAS-12Gb/s interface.

Although solid-state drives are rapidly gaining share of the market of high-performance storage, hard disk drives are still needed by many. Based on IDC industry data and customer feedback, HGST is seeing that by 2016, the performance enterprise (15K and 10K) HDD total available market (TAM) will be more than two times the unit size of the enterprise SSD TAM.

“A couple of factors are keeping the demand strong for 15K HDDs,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at HGST. “First, our customers continue to use 15K HDDs along with a complement of SSDs in tiered pools of storage, depending on their performance, capacity, and power efficiency requirements. Our new Ultrastar C15K600 fills a need for storage that is more cost effective than SSDs, and has the performance, reliability and capacity requirements needed by mission-critical enterprise applications. Also, we see that the industry is transitioning away from 15K 3.5” hard drives to smaller 2.5” drives to help reduce space requirements, while offering comparable capacities to the legacy 3.5”15K products.”

Backed by field-proven technologies and HGST’s quality commitment, the new Ultrastar C15K600 family delivers leading enterprise-class specifications such as 2M hours MTBF, an annualize failure rate (AFR) of 0.44 per cent and comes with a five-year limited warranty.

The 512n and 4Kn versions of the Ultrastar C15K600 hard drive family are now shipping, and are being qualified by select OEMs. The 512e version will be available this summer.

KitGuru Says: The Ultrastar C15K600 may be the last generation of 15K 2.5” hard drives. At present it offers price advantage over comparable enterprise-class solid-state drives. In three years’ time, that advantage will diminish and very few customers will need such high-end HDDs at the cost of better performing SSDs.

The hybrid memory cube consortium (HMCC), an organization dedicated to the development and establishment of an industry-standard interface specification for the hybrid memory cube (HMC) technology, this week introduced version 2.0 of the HMC spec. The second generation of the “cubes” will be able to support bandwidth of up to 480GB/s per one memory device, an unprecedented performance.

The HMC uses advanced through-silicon vias (TSVs) – vertical conduits that electrically connect a stack of individual chips – to combine high-performance logic with dynamic random access memory (DRAM) die. The first commercial HMC 1.0 implementation is sampling from Micron in a 2GB density with an unprecedented 160GB/s of memory bandwidth, while running at 10Gb/s per late data-rate and using up to 70 per cent less energy per bit than existing technologies.

The new HMC 2.0specification supports increased data rate speeds advancing short-reach (SR) performance from 10Gb/s, 12.5Gb/s, and 15Gb/s, up to 30Gb/s, allowing to boost peak bandwidth of a single memory cube up to 480GB/s. The new specification also migrates the associated channel model from SR to VSR to align with existing industry nomenclature. The ultra short-reach (USR) definition also increases performance from 10Gb/s up to 15Gb/s.

The first-generation specification was completed and released publicly in April 2013; several developer and adopter companies, including Altera, Xilinx, and Open-Silicon, have already begun leveraging the specification to design products and solutions that incorporate HMC technology.

The HMCC, founded by leading memory providers Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, has begun circulating this draft specification to a broad range of adopters, with the goal of incorporating adopter members’ input and targeting a completion date of May 2014 for the final version.

KitGuru Says: Theoretically, hybrid memory cubes could be used on next-generation graphics cards. GPUs are always hungry for bandwidth, whereas graphics cards need to be small due to industrial trends towards miniaturisation. Hence, HMCs may be just what the doctor ordered.

MediaTek has announced its first system-on-chip for smartphones that features ARMv8-compatible 64-bit general-purpose cores, advanced graphics engine as well as 4G/LTE connectivity. The MT6752 is pin compatible with the previously announced quad-core MT6732 and can be installed into already developed devices.

MediaTek MT6752 integrates eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores with up to 2.0GHz clock-rate and ARM Mali T760 graphics engine with up to 16 shader cores and support for OpenGL ES 3.0/2.0/1, Direct3D 11.1, OpenCL as well as RenderScript application programming interfaces. The SoC also incorporates a video processor with H.264, H.265 encoder/decoder and motion quality enhancer as well as 16MP camera image signal processor.

The MT6752 chip comes with integrated multi-mode baseband capabilities supporting rel 9 cat 4 4G/LTE FDD and TDD LTE with data rates up to 150Mbits/s downlink and 50Mbits/s uplink, DC-HSPA+ (42Mbits/s), TD-SCDMA and EDGE for legacy 2G/3G networks. It is unclear whether the SoC also integrates Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS/GLONASS and other radio capabilities, but this is a highly-likely scenario.

“The MT6752 is part of our commitment to provide high performance yet cost effective solutions, accelerating the global demographic and cultural transformation for the super-mid market,” said Jeffrey Ju, general manager of the MediaTek smartphone business unit. “We continue to democratize technology as previously seen in the TV and DVD industries.”

The MT6752 system-on-chip will be commercially available in early third quarter of 2014, with a complete reference design and mass production slated for Q4. MediaTek did not reveal when it forecasts the first devices based on the MT6752 to become available, but it is logical to expect them to arrive late in 2014 or early in 2015, almost a year from now.

KitGuru Says: While it is clearly a bit strange to read about chips that will commercially emerge almost a year from now, thanks to such early announcements we clearly know what to expect from smartphones in late 2014 and early 2015. Multi-core 64-bit general-purpose processing, advanced graphics in most of the cases as well as 4G/LTE will get mainstream. High-end devices will probably sport all the same, but will also take advantage of large displays as well as a host of technologies aimed at prolonging battery life and cutting power consumption.

AMD’s R9 290 and R9 290X have been well received by the gaming community over the last couple of months, especially those partner cards featuring enhanced coolers and clock speeds. Today we look at a solution that has received special treatment courtesy of MSI … their R9 290 Gaming Edition. How does it stack up?

Today we supplement our tests by analysing performance at 3840×2160 (4k HD) on the Asus PQ321QE. We acquired one of these screens for high end graphics card reviews. Last year this monitor cost £2,999.99, but (as we predicted) the prices are already dropping in 2014 … down to £2399.99 this month. Sure it is still a lot of money, but prices will continue to decrease, opening up the joys of 4K gaming to a wider audience.

Setting up this monitor is simple with both AMD and Nvidia hardware (via DisplayPort cable) and we didn’t experience any issues. To achieve a refresh rate of 60hz after the Forceware or Catalyst drivers were installed we enable the Multi Stream Transport mode within a submenu of the Asus PQ321QE.

MSI have overclocked their R9 290X from reference speeds of 947mhz to 977mhz although the memory is running at default clock speeds of 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective). The Hawaii core is built on the 28nm process and features 2560 shaders, 64 ROPS and 160 Texture Units. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 512 Bit interface.

Advanced Micro Devices this week introduced its first graphics processing unit for embedded applications that is based on the latest GCN [graphics core next] architecture. The new Radeon E8860 will bring graphics capabilities of embedded applications to the level of new-generation video-game consoles, such as Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4.

AMD GCN architecture was introduced in late 2011 and by now has become the dominant technology in AMD’s product lineup, even the latest A-series APUs [accelerated processing units] feature Radeon graphics cores powered by the GCN. AMD has also integrated its latest graphics processing tech into the new-generation PS4 and Xbox One game console. The only market that has not yet been addressed by the GCN is the market of graphics chips for embedded applications, which has a number of specific requirements, such as supply longevity, ability to work in various harsh environments, broad support of operating systems (including real-time OSes) and so on.

The AMD Radeon E8860 graphics solution is based on Cape Verde XT graphics chip (640 stream processors, 40 texture units, 16 render back ends, 128-bit memory controller, support for up to five displays) and is designed in multi-chip module packaging with 2GB of GDDR5 memory and is available as a mobile PCI Express module (MXM) and PCI Express add-in-board. The E8860 provides 768 single precision and 48 GFLOPS double precision peak compute performance in 37W thermal design power. The E8860 comes with a seven years longevity supply guarantee.

The Radeon E8860 fully supports DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.2, and OpenCL 1.2 and Mantle application programming interfaces as well as such operating systems as Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Embedded 7 Standard, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Embedded 8 Standard, Linux and real-time and safety-critical operating systems supported by CoreAVI’s suite of embedded software drivers.

Thanks to GPU architecture optimized for general-purpose computing, the Radeon E8860 can support complex parallel applications like terrain and weather mapping, facial and gesture recognition and biometric and DNA analysis. This greatly enhances markets the new solution can address.

AMD E8860 GPU-based solutions for digital signage, conventional military and commercial aerospace, medical imaging and embedded gaming machines will be available from Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions, Quixant, Sapphire, Tech Source Inc., Tul, Wold Industrial Systems and other board manufacturers and solution providers beginning in Q1 2014.

KitGuru Says: AMD’s current business strategy implicates increased attention to the market of embedded applications. Therefore, it is logical to finally release a GCN-based offering for such appliances that need discrete graphics solutions. Unfortunately, even under the new strategy, it took AMD about two years to develop a software package for its Cape Verde XT GPU (introduced in early 2012) that allows it to be used by embedded devices.

Sapphire Technology is working on a new version of AMD Radeon R9 290X-based graphics card with 8GB of GDDR5 memory onboard, a media report claims. The solution with enlarged frame buffer is projected to become available shortly and offer unbeatable performance in ultra-high resolutions.

The world’s number one supplier of AMD Radeon-based graphics cards is preparing to launch its Vapor-X R9 290X adapter that will not only feature an advanced vapour chamber-based cooling system with three fans, but also 8GB of GDDR5 memory onboard, reports VideoCardz web-site. The card will also support four monitor connectors so that to make it easy to create multi-monitor setups with Eyefinity technology.

It is unknown whether GPU and memory clock-rates of Sapphire Vapor-X R9 290X graphics cards will be similar to the reference design or higher by default, but it can be safely said that the vapour chamber-based cooling system with three fans will provide a lot of headroom for overclocking thanks to its ultimate efficiency.

While 8GB of GDDR5 memory sounds impressive, not everyone needs a frame-buffer that large. For the vast majority of use cases, 4GB GDDR5 should be enough for fine frame-rates. 8GB will provide a significant advantage to those, who play in 4K resolution (3840*2160) and/or with very high-quality antialiasing settings.

Keeping in mind that AMD officially positions the Radeon R9 290X as an ultimate solution for 4K gaming, it is highly likely that not only Sapphire, but also its rivals among other suppliers of graphics cards will offer similar Radeon R9 290X-based models with 8GB of GDDR5. Such graphics boards could become AMD’s answer to the launch of Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black Edition graphics boards earlier this month.

Sapphire did not comment on the news-story.

KitGuru: As manufacturers of dynamic random access memory are ramping up production of GDDR5 to fulfill demand for Sony PlayStation 4, such memory type is getting more affordable. Hence, it is doubtful that 8GB versions of the Radeon R9 290X will cost an arm and a leg. At the same time, if they come with increased clock-speeds and formally beat the GeForce GTX Titan Black, they will not only bring performance crown to AMD, but will likely become quite popular among enthusiasts who are building new setups with 4K displays.