|  |  |  | | | | | TweakTown Everything Feed | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Corsair Announces Transition Plan for Force Series Solid-state Drives FREMONT, California — February 18, 2011 — Corsair®, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced its plans for the upcoming transition from 34 nanometer to 25 nanometer flash chips used on its solid-state drives. "There is a lot of confusion in the market about the impact the move from 34 to 25nm flash will have on both the price and the performance of solid-state drives," said John Beekley, VP of Technical Marketing at Corsair. "We've been working closely with SandForce to ensure the smoothest possible transition and we're sharing the details today." Flash memory manufacturers are transitioning to using 25nm process for fabrication, allowing them to boost capacity and reduce costs, which in turn will allow SSD suppliers to pass those savings to the consumer. The downside is that SSDs built using 25nm flash ICs may require more over-provisioning (a technique used to ensure reliability) which lowers the capacity of the SSD and may also see a reduction in performance. "The Corsair and SandForce engineering teams have been working closely with the key flash memory suppliers to profile and qualify 25nm parts," continued Beekley, "and we've been running our Force drives through performance and reliability testing alongside them. We're pleased with the progress that's been made in getting the Force Series 25nm drives ready to ship to customers." In the Corsair Labs, using the ATTO synthetic benchmark, only a small reduction in performance (roughly 3-4%) was seen when testing Force Series SSDs built with 25nm flash. Real-world tests, such as copying groups of files or measuring Windows boot times, support the ATTO results and show little to no performance loss. However, the over-provisioning needed means that in some cases the capacity of the drives will be reduced. "So that our customers are perfectly clear about what they are getting, we will be changing the model numbers on all 25nm based drives and transitioning the drive capacities we offer where necessary. For example, a drive that would have been sold as 120GB when built with 34nm flash will be launched as a 115GB version," said Jared Peck, Global Product Marketing Manager for SSDs at Corsair, "All Force Series drives built with 25nm flash will also have a '-A' suffix on the part and/or model number, making it easy to determine exactly what you're getting." Force Series 115GB and 80GB 25nm drives will be available by the end of February from Corsair's worldwide network of resellers and distributors. The F115-A has a Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $215 and the F80-A has an MSRP of $169 in the U.S. For comparison the current Force Series F120 has an MSRP of $249 and the F80 has an MSRP of $199. You can read more about the transition plan, including the full set of results from our Corsair Lab performance testing, on the Corsair Blog. Images of the Force Series can be found in the SSD section of the web site. About Corsair Founded in 1994, Corsair supplies high performance products purchased primarily by PC gaming enthusiasts who build their own PCs or buy pre-assembled customized systems. The company's award-winning products include DRAM memory modules, USB flash drives, power supply units, solid-state drives, cooling systems, computer cases, and headset and speakers systems. Copyright© 2011 Corsair. All rights reserved. Corsair, and the Sails logo are registered trademarks, andForce Series are trademarks of Corsair in the United States and/or other countries. All other company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Apollo 18 is a movie filmed in the "found footage" documentary style which involves the story of the Apollo 18 undocumented and covert mission to the moon which reveals other life forms which are quite disturbing.  The movie is produced by Night Watch/Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov with the movie poster teasing "There's a Reason We've Never Gone Back To The Moon." It's like the love child of Paranormal Activity and Alien and actually looks quite good.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | U.S. President Barack Obama wrapped up his week of mingling with leaders in the tech industry with a tour of Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon manufacturing facility. While a large portion of many tech manufacturing jobs remain based in other countries, Intel remains steadfastly dedicated to being a U.S company from start to finish. Intel plans on creating over 4,000 jobs this year outside other future endeavors. Obama seemed very impressed by the facility. "We just had an amazing tour. One of my staff said it's like magic. I had a chance to see everything from an electron microscope, to the inside of the microprocessor plant--the clean room. Of all the gadgets you got here, what actually most impressed me is the students and science projects here." Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel, was on hand as host and also made the announcement of Intel's new facility coming to Arizona. It is going to be named Fab 42 and will be a $5 billion facility dedicated to 14 nanometer development and manufacturing as well as future projects. This is on top of the plans for a 14 nanometer facility that will be added on to the existing Oregon complex.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Crysis 2 and Killzone 3 have each been leaked out to the internet and now Bulletstorm has joined them. Elaborate marketing stunt or behind the scenes leaks? Are leaked games the new cheap marketing stunt? These AAA titles will still sell in the millions so a few leaks isn't going to hurt them, right? EA has taken another hit with Bulletstorm making its way to torrent sites, with Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions popping up online with only the former being confirmed to work. The PC version has not made its way out. 2011 has started with quite a few leaks, is it a coincidence? Or is it a different form of marketing? Instead of spending $30 million on an advertising campaign, maybe having 1 million people download your game is less of a hit? It gets the game into peoples hands and lets them brag about it to friends who might in turn not want to risk getting hit by the ban hammer for their consoles and rushing out to buy it?  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Last month Mach Xtreme celebrated their first anniversary. As a company starting business in the middle of a global recession, the hill is high from the start, but once you take a look at the companies Mach Xtreme is dog fighting against, the odds don't look all that good. Mach Xtreme is taking on the industry big boys, OCZ Technology, Kingston and the rest of the well known companies making SSDs, flash drives and memory modules. In order to survive, Mach Xtreme has to do things differently and that is what they have done from the starting block. Mach Xtreme offers 'urban' themed products and recruits inner city graffiti artists to design logos and product graphics. The result is a different form of technology, one that offers a unique style while still retaining function. Today we are looking at the Mach Xtreme MX-FX USB 3.0 thumb drive. Physically the MX-FX looks a lot like the Patriot Magnum; they share the same external aluminium housing, but the Magnum is a USB 2.0 drive and the MX-FX makes use of USB 3.0 technology. Mach Xtreme is offering the MX-FX in 16, 32, 64 and 128GB capacity sizes. Our 32GB sample has a claimed read speed of 125MB/s and a claimed write speed of up to 80MB/s. All of the drives in the MX-FX Series have different read and write speeds, but today we are focusing on the 32GB drive since that is what we have on hand. When it comes to price, we found the 32GB model available in the US for 120.73 USD. This is right around the same price of the Patriot Supersonic USB 3.0 Flash Drive we reviewed just the other day. The MX-FX has a higher rated read and write speed than the Patriot Supersonic, although the availability is much lower since Mach Xtreme doesn't have the same number of distribution and e-tail outlets as Patriot has built. This is something that will come with time as the company builds their reputation. Let's take a look at some benchmarks to get this review kicked into high gear. ATTO gives us a taste of what to expect from the Mach Xtreme MX-FX 32GB thumb drive. In our testing we achieved read speeds of up to 127MB/s and write speeds of up to 80MB/s. This is far faster than the USB 2.0 limits of 35MB/s. Using our standard testing methodology, we did find one area where things weren't so glamorous, and that is the write access times. In the write access time chart at the bottom of the previous column the Mach Xtreme MX-FX showed signs of JMicron cache style patterns. This is where the drive writes data very quickly until the cache fills and then the time it takes to write increases rapidly. For a storage device this isn't much of an issue, but if you are planning on running an operating system or virtual desktop like Ceedo, then having a high write access time is not an ideal situation. In Crystal Disk Mark we get to see the 4K read and write performance of the Mach Xtreme MX-FX 32GB thumb drive. The 4K read speed stays between 4 and 5 MB/s which is very good for a dual channel thumb drive. The Patriot Supersonic USB 3.0 that we reviewed a few days ago achieved between 7 and 8MB/s, but it uses a quad channel design. Let's take a look and see what this means to the real world file transfer tests. AS SSD Copy Benchmark was used to determine the real world file transfer speeds of the thumb drives. Three tests are ran; ISO, Program and Game. The ISO file is a large file, Program is a series of small files and Game is a mix of several large and small files. The ISO test on the Patriot was conducted in 24.07 seconds, a 44.61MB/s rating, while the MX-FX took 28.01 seconds, a rating of 38.35MB/s. The Mach Xtreme was just a little slower in this large file test. The Program test went a little different and the Mach Xtreme MX-FX outperformed the Supersonic by 27 seconds and 9MB/s. The Game test, the mix between large and small files also favoured the Mach Xtreme MX-FX. In this test the Mach Xtreme outperformed the Supersonic by 4MB/s, around 4 seconds faster. The Mach Xtreme MX-FX is a very fast USB 3.0 thumb drive; it's actually one of the fastest we've tested to date, but the MX-FX is not perfect. The only area we didn't like is how the drive handles access times when writing data. But as long as you are not running an operating system on the drive you won't be affected. As intended, the MX-FX is a portable storage drive and it excels at this function. The price is in line with other USB 3.0 Super Speed thumb drives and the performance is higher. .... Read the full content in your browser!
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Build and protect with ease, in the latest In-Win BUC PC chassis Taiwan - February 2011 - In-Win Development Inc., a leading innovator in contemporary PC hardware and multiple winner of the internationally renowned reddot design award, has today launched its new performance PC chassis, the BUC. The "shield" concept behind the BUC's design is echoed across its front panel, while the strong SECC steel construction and a hard-wearing black interior and exterior create a reliable, subtle and high quality case for PC builders. The BUC's design gem is the clever EZ-swap HDD drive bay, with a lockable door that allows access to three HDD without having to remove the whole side panel. The tool-less, vibration reducing drive bays complete the package to give a triple innovation. With convenient Super-speed USB 3.0, USB 2.0, audio and eSATA ports on the top of the chassis, users can easily connect headsets, cameras, cell phones, external hard drives and a wealth of other devices with ease. Finally, three integrated 120mm and several extra fan positions give it excellent cooling potential for all the latest hardware as well. With core design innovations and high quality of construction, the In-Win BUC PC chassis is a great choice for PC builders worldwide. About In Win IN WIN Development Inc., an ISO 9001 manufacturer of professional computer chassis, server chassis, power supplies and storage devices, is the leading provider of enclosure solutions to system integrators worldwide. Founded in 1986, IN-WIN provides high quality product that conform to all safety regulations, as well as unsurpassed customer service. Our slogan "Contemporary and Innovative" serves as the foundation of not only our product development but also our attitudes in serving and catering to our strategic partner's wishes. We take the "im" out of "impossible"…  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Let's discuss something that is not really being talked about right now, the smartphone and gaming industry. Smartphones really shined throughout 2010, with Apple's iPhone and iOS dominating as well as Google and their Android OS. These were based off single-core designs and relatively basic GPUs included. This year we're on the verge of having quad-core CPU smartphones backed up with 12-core GPU's all inside a smartphone (or should it be 'super-smartphone'?) that will barely get warm under load. Tablets are becoming a tour de force in all industries and will surely take pot shots at the notebook industry and possibly overtake it in a relatively short period of time. What does this mean for next-gen consoles? Surely they'll have to have more than just quad-core CPU's inside if a relatively basic (when in comparison) smartphone can include this. What about GPU power? Are Microsoft and Sony thinking of the future? Current gen consoles have been out for over five years and took multi-billion dollar losses to even get here. Both sides have committed to a ten year life span of consoles. Remember the RROD from the Xbox 360's? A billion dollar problem for Microsoft. We haven't seen that in any of the current generation smartphones or tablets. Technology has improved at an unprecedented rate over the past 5 years. Yes, technology has always moved this fast - but not in the leaps and bounds we're experiencing at the moment. The technology industry (TV's, smartphones, tablets, PC's, notebooks, consoles) is an industry that is very hard to predict, because there's so many players constantly releasing new products as well as having something behind the scenes that will literally knock the socks off of most people. Will this be the case for next-gen consoles? If so, with the amazing leaps and bounds smartphones and tablets are doing, consoles will have no option but to have an exponential increase in power. Not just CPU and GPU, but in all things they do (connectivity, prices of games, user-input, Kinect/Move, etc). PC's currently have a minimum of dual or quad core, 4 - 8GB of RAM, very powerful GPUs (and multiple one at that) and are constantly upgradeable. Next-gen consoles are going to need to stand out from an ever-evolving smartphone and tablet market in order to capture an audience that they are barely sustaining now.
Game quality is getting lower as the restrictions of consoles are being realised; AAA titles need to sell 5 million copies or more to deem them "successful" in this world of Call of Duty $1 billion revenue-type games.
How will the console market evolve? There's a box in front of Microsoft and Sony right now and it requires thinking out of it in order to move forward. Especially with billions of dollars, millions of customers and various developers and corporations that solely rely on game development and sales in order to exist. Will we see the usual thing we saw from Sony last time? Where the PS3 was meant to be capable of dual-HDMI output, with the console supporting dual 1080p outputs? AAA titles these days are usually rendered (on both consoles) at ~1200x600 resolution, then upscaled to 1280x720 or 1920x1080 by your TV. False promises can now be fulfilled on next-gen consoles with current GPU hardware more than capable of 1080p @ 60fps or 1080p @ 120fps (allowing either smooth 120fps or the option of 3D). Will this strike a change in the gaming market? Cheaper games? More indie developers? Consoles with upgradeable parts? - Right now, I'm sure Microsoft and Sony are shaking in their boots. The Mobile World Congress is showing them that all players in the market are willing to place bets on the smartphone and tablet markets, where the two juggernauts of the console industry are struggling to move past a ten-year development cycle. Games on smartphones are tipped to reach current-gen console quality within two years, yet current-gen consoles will still be offering the same thing they've offered since 2005. Will game developers wake up and realize that there needs to be a revolution in gaming instead of the usual evolution in hardware? Since the 360 and PS3 we have had games with $50 - $100 million budgets; the games medium is being taken just as seriously as any tent-pole Hollywood movie. With this in mind, is it time for an exponential leap in graphics quality so that 10 years from now the console won't be over taken by smartphone and tablet technology? As an avid gamer, I can't wait to see what the next-generation of games brings us. .... Read the full content in your browser!
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Taipei Game Show 2011 - No excuses this time, this video is all about the girls of the Taipei Game Show 2011. Do I need to say anymore?  Hope you enjoyed it! And if you are on a low bandwidth connection, there are plenty of pictures in the gallery below.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Taipei Game Show 2011 - When I said in an earlier post that there was lots of cool technology at Taipei Game Show 2011, I meant it, but it was all being hogged by loads of lovely Taiwanese girls. That's not necessarily a bad thing, maybe just a reason for all the girlie videos today. Sorry ladies.  So, besides Sony having a kick ass Gran Turismo 5 five screen simulator at their booth, they were also actively promoting PlayStation Move - the gaming controller competitor to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect that actually requires a controller. Booth babe ladies were scattered on a stationary merry-go-round setup with loads of PS3's and the Move motion controller. Sure, Move is far from new, but it's still kind of newish in Taiwan and the first I have really seen it in action for a considerable amount of time.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Taipei Game Show 2011 - Sony had a massive presence at the Taipei Game Show 2011 with it's large PlayStation booth going toe for toe right next to Microsoft and it's Kinect gaming stations.  One of the cool things Sony was showcasing was an awesome Gran Turismo 5 racing simulator setup with no less than five Bravia HDTVs, racing chair and Logitech gaming hardware. The setup was made that little bit sweeter with a Taiwanese booth babe girl that even knew how to drive. Unfortunately I wasn't able to sit down and have a play, I think Sony wanted more attractive people than I sitting down and enjoying it. Nonetheless, a pretty cool setup by Sony who in my opinion had the best booth at TGS this year.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Taipei Game Show 2011 - Today marked the first day of the Taipei Game 2011 and we went along to see what was on show. Besides the vast amount of beautiful show girls, there was some cool new technology to take in at the event. Don't worry; we're coming back to the show girls soon.  Earlier this week at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, Sony Ericsson officially unveiled the PlayStation Phone aka the Xperia PLAY, the first PlayStation certified smartphone. Think of a Google Android 2.3 smartphone and a PlayStation Portable fused together. It has all the same controls as a PSP and the same level of graphics quality, but of course offers much more in terms of communications as you would expect from a phone. The Xperia PLAY we went hands-on with today is finished as far as the hardware and outside appearance goes, that part won't change. However, the firmware and other software bits still needs some work according to Kevin, the Sony Ericsson representative that we were talking to at the show. Apparently they will have the software up to scratch and at shipping level standard in around one month and the phone / portable gaming console should go on sale sometime in April for a worldwide launch. The representative was not prepared to discuss details on pricing. Watch the video above for a short and sweet hands-on introduction to the Xperia PLAY. Are you going to buy one? Let us know by commenting!  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Our Download of the Day today is Google Chrome 10.0.648.82 Beta. Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. One box for everything Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages. Thumbnails of your top sites Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab. Incognito mode Don't want pages you visit to show up in your web history? Choose incognito mode for private browsing. Safe browsing Google Chrome warns you if you're about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe website. For information about alpha and developer builds, check out the Chrome dev channel here. The latest version includes the following changes: Changes in Version 10.0.648.82 Beta - Contains stability fixes.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Our Deal of the Day today is the Dell Small Business - Buffalo 2TB DriveStation External Hard Drive for Only $59.99 with FREE Shipping. Offer: A GREAT buy on a 2TB external hard drive! If you need external space for your laptop or desktop, this is a great one to consider. Hurry before they expire it!  | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
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