The Inquirer

MSI takes it to Asus with desktop tiddler

Rob Kerr — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:40:27 GMT

Rob Kerr the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 18:10:00

Wee Titan

MSI HAS shown off its new, Shuttle-esque mini PC. The Titan 700 is based on the Mini-ITX board and is powered by a VIA C7 Series 2Ghz processer with 1GB of DDR2 - running from a VIA CN700/8237R+ chipset. It ships with a slim DVD burner, a 2.5-inch S-ATA HDD enabling the compact size and reducing heat dissipation within the chassis. The basis of the MSI bare-boned themed system is a Mini-ITX motherboard. MSI Titan 700 Dimensions for the mini-ITX run in it at 170 x 170mm, smaller than the micro ATX form factor. Since it utilises a smaller chassis, the 60W power source is an external energy-efficient notebook style power-supply....

Dell ratchets up gaming systems

Wily Ferret — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:23:12 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Friday 2 May 2008. 10:14:00

Alien-who?

PROVING THAT is really had no reason to purchase Alienware, Dell has pushed out a revision to its XPS range of gaming systems that really trounces most of what the UFO-bods have to offer. Based on the same XPS 700-series chassis that has won it critical acclaim in the tech press (as well as some stunningly large courier bills, no doubt) the XPS 730 H2C adds quad-core processors and funky water-cooling to the line up. Dell is shipping Corsair Dominator memory, as well as multi-graphics-cards from both ATI and Nvidia. Interestingly, the boys from Round Rock have dropped the previous BTX form factor and gone with standard ATX boards, making this possibly the most upgradeable XPS system to date....

Intel goes gaga for Imac chips

Wily Ferret — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:29:22 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Tuesday 29 April 2008. 06:59:00

Shipping unannounced processors on the not-so-sly

APPLE HAS UPDATED its popular line of Imacs with some very interesting technology indeed. Usually the most interesting thing about Apple's desktop refreshes is a quick tally of who is in and who is out on the graphics front. For both DAAMIT and Graphzilla, getting their chips into the all-in-one machines is a nice trophy sale, not to mention a good bit of branding. (For the record, ATI is the big winner this time around, with three of the four models sporting 2400 or 2600 cards. Only the top end 24" Imac has an Nvidia card, the 8800 GS). But the no, the most interesting thing this time around is the processor spec....

Asus attacks desktop market

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:13:28 GMT

Stewart Meagher , Wednesday 9 April 2008. 15:29:00

Tiny shiny thing tips up

TAIWANESE LAPTOP specialist Asus is making waves in the desktop market with its latest release first spotted by the INQUIRER last month. Hailed in some quarters as the smallest ever PC with full HD 1080p graphics capability on an embedded card, the Essentio CS5110 boasts some pretty impressive specs - and some desktop firsts - in a tiny, shiny shell. With a Bluray drive on board, and proper 1080p HDMI output, hooked up to a suitable TV, combined with full optical 7.1 surround, this should make gaming and movies a pleasure. Asus also tells us that this little black box should be pretty cool and quiet, too as it has the world's first 2-in-1 thermal module which insulates heat from from the cooling fan....

Dead format rises from the grave

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:13:28 GMT

Stewart Meagher , Friday 11 April 2008. 14:03:00

Don't chuck out those HD DVDs just yet

IF YOU WERE CAUGHT on the wrong side of the HD format war, and you're in the market for a mini PC with a bit of multimedia oomph, Shuttle could have the very thing. Its newly-released G5 6801m can be tricked up with a dual function optical drive capable of using both Blu-Ray and the now deceased HD-DVD at full 1080p (for those of you still banging rocks together to make fire, that's one thousand and eighty lines of vertical resolution, progressively scanned... or as good as it gets in high definition terms) to a suitably-equipped display. Your ears are also in for a treat with full 7.1 surround....

Mac cloner Psystar moves, still trading

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:13:28 GMT

Stewart Meagher , Monday 21 April 2008. 13:00:00

Despite the brouhaha

DESPITE GROWING CONCERNS amongst Mac watchers worldwide, Florida-based consulting company Psystar is still offering cheapo Mac clone to US customers. The amount of net noise regarding the company is still at fierce howl levels with accusations of phishing scams, faked addresses and even some conspiracy theorists claiming that the whole thing is just an Apple publicity stunt. So, we're going to stick our necks out a wee bit here and take a look at the other side of the coin. We may well be proved wrong, gawd knows it won't be the first time, but where would we be if no-one ever took a punt on a slightly dodgy-looking outsider? Much has been made of the fact that the company's trading address has been changed a couple of times (the first of which was attributed to an error) since the story broke early last week, with people making a huge hoohah out of the fact that the original address appeared to be a three-bedroomed house on residential street....

Mac cloner Psystar moves, still trading

Stewart Meagher — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:11:20 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Monday 21 April 2008. 13:00:00

Despite the brouhaha

Dead format rises from the grave

Stewart Meagher — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:52:58 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Friday 11 April 2008. 14:03:00

Don't chuck out those HD DVDs just yet

Asus attacks desktop market

Stewart Meagher — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:53:52 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Wednesday 9 April 2008. 15:29:00

Tiny shiny thing tips up

Asus is now a PC company

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:02:43 GMT

Charlie Demerjian in Hannover the Inquirer, Tuesday 11 March 2008. 09:00:00

CeBIT 2008 Shaking up the market

ASUS IS FINALLY taking the step that you knew they would, they are making PCs. Low and high end machines are first out of the gate, complimenting the laptops and accessories they already make. Asus Ares Gaming PC First one is the Ares, a gaming machine if that is not blindingly obvious by the oversized stylish carbon fibre case. It will be sold through vendors and the channel as a complete box with enough variants to satisfy most people. It has a brand new keyboard with a round swivelling game key add-on to the left and customized Logitech G9 mouse....

Apple unfreezes Imacs

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:33 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk , Friday 2 November 2007. 12:07:00

Apply hot breath

PLASTIC TOY MAKER, Apple fixed its freezing Imacs with a clever piece of software. Imacintosh owners had been startled by having their Imacs freeze on them. Some thought it was a message from God. The software fix can be applied to 20- and 24-inch Imacs sporting 2.0 2.4, or 2.8GHz processors. Although not from God, it is from His appointed director of marketing. Apple admitted last month that a previous software update it issued mashed up some Imacs. It promised to fix the freeze and now reckons it has. The updates are here and here. µ

Mandriva’s Nigeria-gate man speaks to the INQ

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:33 GMT

Martin Veitch , Friday 2 November 2007. 18:31:00

Keeping his legal powder dry for now

MANDRIVA'S CEO in the news, Francois Bancilhon has spoken to The INQUIRER about his blog entry yesterday that caused a stir by implicitly suggesting Microsoft had used borderline dirty tactics to encourage the Nigerian government to switch a large number of systems from Linux to Windows. In an "open letter to Steve Ballmer", Bancilhon writes: "your people got in the game and the deal got more competitive. I would not say it got dirty, but someone could have said that. Your team fought and fought again the deal, but still the customer was happy with Mandriva. We actually closed the deal, we took the order, we qualified the software, we got the machine shipped....

AMD prepares DX10.1 part for AGP computers

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:33 GMT

Theo Valich , Tuesday 6 November 2007. 16:51:00

King of the AGP upgrade market, Daamit

THE REMAINING AGP UPGRADE market will be all AMD's, it seems. After HIS launched 2400 and 2600 parts for the AGP 4x/8x interface, we were set for a swan-song for the connector which has hosted our graphics cards in one form or another since 1997. But AMD has decided to address the needs of this dying market with a DirectX 10.1 part as well. Manufacturers only made the switch to PCI Express this year, with PCI E parts taking over from AGP ones. With Nvidia screwing up the GeForce 8 series (G8x chips cannot work with BR02, Nvidia's own PCIe-2-AGP bridge chip), the market was left open for AMD's X1950 AGP and different models from 2000 series....

HP releases mother of all Workstations

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Nick Farrell , Wednesday 7 November 2007. 14:59:00

Father of all lies rejoices

MAKER OF JOLLY-EXPENSIVE printer ink, HP has released what its spinners are calling the 'mother of all workstations'. We are not sure that if it means that the thing breeds or not as this was not on the press release that HP gave us. We expect Freud would have a field day with the way that HP describes its 'mother' too. Firstly it hasn't got a name, it has a number, the HP XW8600 Workstation. It means that the outfit is unable to connect to its mother, and therefore is unable to communicate properly with it. Inside are two quad-core Xeon Intel processors and enhanced graphics with 2D or 3D Nvidia graphics cards carrying memory between 256M bytes and 512M bytes....

INQ buys a 790FX motherboard in Croatia

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Thursday 8 November 2007. 11:58:00

We go shopping for bananas and motherboards

CROATIAN DISTRIBUTOR of Gigabyte kit, Ve-mil received a shipment of motherboards from Gigabyte, containing a set of MA790FX-DQ6 motherboards. As soon as one of our readers tipped us off, we showed up in a near-by store to shop for some bananas, and took the plunge of paying 180 quid (252 EUR, 366 USD) to get our mitts on a board. If you're falling from your feet about the price of the motherboard, don't worry - it will carry a more normal cost in countries without 22% VAT. If you take a look at the Ve-mil's price list, the board is still listed, for 180 quid for cash, and 190 quid if you pay with plastique....

Sapphire's 790FX board pixellated

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Thursday 8 November 2007. 14:00:00

Website features PCB, retail packaging images

DAAMIT'S PARTNERS ARE braced for impact, preparing for something that is going to be biggest ATI-AMD launch ever. Radeon HD 3800 series will be launched in seven days, on Thursday November 15th, with AMD Phenom CPUs and 790FX/790X/770 motherboards being launched on following Monday (Nov 19th). Thanks to bird named Phoenix, our marvelous hunter for hidden corners of the Interweb, we got a link to Sapphire's official website portraying its latest product, PURE CrossfireX. Box and motherboard shot show Sapphire had to follow corporate colours of AMD: Black and Green dominate The motherboard comes with a black PCB, so Sapphire called it quits on that unique white-and-red PCB from yesteryear....

Zotac to bring HDMI to 8800GT

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Friday 9 November 2007. 18:14:00

8800GT with DVI audio set to launch next week

WE ARE JUST completing tests on a sample of Zotac's 8800GT AMP! Edition. This board is without any doubt, the fastest performing 8800GT on the market, thanks to its sky-high clockspeeds - 700 MHz GPU, 2 GHz GDDR3 memory, 1.7 GHz shaders. But, next week, a new batch of GeForce 8800GT cards is set to appear, and this time around, Zotac is bringing out those modifications company is known for. Just like the rest of GeForce 8 line-up, the 8800GT is going to get DVI Audio. Engineers modified the PCB in order to get the S/PDIF output somehow, and 5.1 channel sound is going to be put through the DVI port to a DVI-HDMI adapter....

AMD's Phenom/790FX utility could be a jewel

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Saturday 10 November 2007. 13:53:00

First INQpressions AMD Overdrive

Product: AMD Overdrive Website: http://ati.amd.com System Req: AMD Series 7 motherboard, WinXP/Vista Price: Free download (on November 19th) AFTER WE bought 1.17 kilo of bananas and GigaByte's MA790GX-DQ6 motherboard, the time came for some serious testing. This board has shown quite a lot of improvement over 580X chipset, and we're quite happy with it. But where the 790X and 790FX (we'll explain the difference between the two in separate article) will really shine is with AMD Overclock, a brilliant little utility that was developed by Canucks over at Markham. AMD Overclock is, finally, an answer to Nvidia's Ntune and Intel's Desktop Control Centre - but it offers more features than any of these two apps....

Dell set to launch AMD Phenom, QuadFire system

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Saturday 10 November 2007. 14:04:00

XPS moving from Intel-only, Nvidia-only

EVER SINCE DELL launched its XPS series of desktop and notebook computers geared towards gamers, the company has used only Intel, Nvidia and ATI chips in the range. And ATI DX9 chips only came in when Nvidia screwed DX10 Vista drivers, but things returned to normal once that nV driver team sorted things out. Things are about to change. AMD is showcasing Dell's latest XPS gaming machine. When you know that AMD is showing a machine, you can figure what is hidden inside: an AMD Phenom processor, four Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards in CrossFireX configuration, reference (DFI/Sapphire) 790FX motherboard, and the rest of components dreams are made of....

AMD Phenom 9000 is quad core, and 8000 is tri-core

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Tuesday 13 November 2007. 01:07:00

AMD Spider Launch Slideware glideware sideware hardware

IN THIS FOUR-PART series we will reveal details of this week's AMD launch, widely slated to be a lifeline for the struggling firm. We'll disclose how quiet/noisy they will be, prices, positioning and basically all there is to know about the launch of AMD's Spider Platform, as AMD is calling it. Thus, AMD is launching its beasts to quench the thirst of people. Spider consists of AMD Phenom - the X4/X3/X2 naming convention is dead and Phenom FX processors, 790X/790FX, which are Crossfire and CrossfireX chipsets, and of course, Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 graphic cards. Looking at a whole computer, this is the first time that a manufacturer is launching a complete 65nm and sub-65nm component, since all key parts - the Phenom, 770/780/790X/790FX, RV670 - are all made at 65nm or 55nm....

AMD prepares 55nm HD2400 and HD2600

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Monday 19 November 2007. 22:41:00

RV620 and RV635 to sport new monikers

AMD IS PREPARING an interesting offering. After ordering massive amounts of 55nm 300mm wafers from TSMC containing Number of The Beast (RV670 comes with 666M trannies), it turns out that RV670 was just the beginning. There are several new models coming to market based on these new 55nm chips. The RV620 is going to exist as a desktop card, succeeding the 2400Pro and 2400 XT, while the mobile part will come in a typically modular configuration. Since the lowest possible power is of essence, this won't be a turbo-charged part. RV620 is all about bringing affordable UVD to the world of desktops and noteboks, and not consuming too much power....

Nvidia 680i chipset fails future-proof test

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

Theo Valich , Friday 23 November 2007. 12:37:00

Four-core Yorkfield is a no-go

IT HAS LONG BEEN rumoured on Internet forums, but now a moderator at EVGA forums has appeared to confirm that Nvidia's Nforce 680i chipset fails to support all 45nm processors from Intel. In a weird flashback to Nforce4 SLI shenanigans, with its lack of compatibility with the Pentium D 820, the tide has now turned on the Nforce 680i. It seems Nvidia ran into some compatibility problems with upcoming Intel processors. It declined our request for a comment on the matter earlier today. Given Intel's less-than-stellar history with Socket 775 motherboards, the SNAFU is not so surprising. Since their release in 2004, the Socket 775 chips have continuously required motherboard revisions, even though pin-to-pin compatibility existed....

Lenovo to open big Polish PC factory

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:32 GMT

INQUIRER staff , Tuesday 27 November 2007. 11:23:00

Fifth announcement this year

CHINESE PC GIANT Lenovo said it will open a factory and " fulfilment centre" in the Legnica Special Economic Zone in Poland. The 30,000 square metre factory will swing into action in the third quarter of next year, and produce two million desktops a year. A thousand people will work in the factory when it's up and running, and it's the fifth factory and fulfilment centre Lenovo's announced this year. The others are in Shanghai, North Carolina US, Monterrey in Mexico, and Baddi in India. µ

HP fancies building mobos in South Atlantic island

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:31 GMT

Fernando Cassia , Friday 30 November 2007. 11:22:00

Madmen bearing screwdrivers fight it

ACCORDING TO a story published in the local media, HP is evaluating a plan to manufacture PCs for the local market in Argentina's province of Tierra del Fuego, taking advantage of the island's industry promotion programmes, but PC assemblers on the mainland are insanely lobbying to fight it. Just as we recently mentioned Argentina's southmost province of Tierra del Fuego (TDF hereinafter), comes news about an imbroglio involving "The Company Formerly Known as Hewlett Packard" (and formerly headed by our friend Carly Fiorina) in one side and a local business chamber representing PC system assemblers in mainland Argentina in the other corner of the ring side....

Dell strikes deals with Dixons across Europe

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:03:31 GMT

INQUIRER staff , Thursday 13 December 2007. 14:45:00

Big deal for Dell

TIN MAKER DELL said it has struck a deal with DSG - the PC World, Currys and Dixons owner - Europewide. This means that customers across Europe will be able to buy Dell kit through DSG stores, in 12 countries across Europe. DSG will also offer its Techguys support in the UK to Dell products. Dell estimates that its products will now be available in 10,000 shops across the world. The DSG deal is a big deal for Dell. µ