System diary blog

Core 2 Extreme X9000 was announced on CES 2008. This is extreme version of mobile processors. Core 2 Extreme will be released in the end of February and new laptops based on this processor will come out in March.

New dual core cpu from Intel is built on 45 nm technology and has 6 Mb of cache memory. Also it will have 800 Mhz FSB speed and total speed is equal to 2.8 GHz. This will allow many users to move from desktops to the notebooks and would not see the difference in performance.

The main disadvantage of this new technology is the price - $800 per each unit. This price does not allow average computer users to buy Core 2 Extreme X9000.

Several months ago Intel showed new dual processor motherboard Skulltrail, but when they released the motherboard it looks different.

First difference is that instead of the regular sinks on the South and North Bridges, which are NVIDIA nForce 100 MCP SLI chipsets, Intel placed cooler. Also according to the picture we can see that motherboard has four PCI Express x16 slots and two PCI. This motherboard has two Socket LGA 771 which can be used for couple of Xeon processors or two Quad Cores with 45 nm technology.

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 specially designed for the users who work with CAD (Computer-aided Design) and DCC (Digital Content Creation). This card built on 65 nm technology and D8P core.

New card twice faster then previous models because 112 line processors and 512 Mb of RAM which allows it to create enormous output of 51.2 GB/s. Also Quadro FX supports such NVIDIA applications as Application Configuration Engine (ACE), NVIDIA SLI Technology and NVIDIA CUDA Technology. This card will sell on the US markets at $1600 dollars per unit.

Sony Electronics introduced new Blu-ray drive BDU-X10S which supports Blu-ray, DVD and CD formats. Price for this drive is very affordable - $200.

BDU-X10S built on 5.25′” standard and has SATA interface.

New drive will be available in January 2008.

Dell Inc. starts selling computers with Ubuntu Linux 7.10.

Ubuntu Linux 7.10 was released in the October of this year. New Linux OS includes such software as Tracker utility, OpenOffice, Xorg graphic server, graphic interface Gnome 2.20, Mozilla Firefox, Compiz and other useful programs.

According to the Dell Ubuntu Linux 7.10 will be installed on desktop system Inspiron 530N and notebook Inspiron 1420N. Dell confirmed that all this models will include DVD burner for movie creation.

Inspiron 1420N based on the Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1.5 Ghz frequency. Also it includes 1 Gb memory, 80 Gb hard drive, X1300 Intel Graphic Accelerator and DVD or DVD-RW drive. This is a based model configuration and will cost from 600 dollars.

On other hand Inpiron 530N will be build on the Intel Pentium E2140 processor with 1.6 Ghz frequency. On top of that computer will have 1 Gb memory, 160 Gb hard drive with 7200 rpm, nVidia GeForce 8300GS, DVD drive, Gigabyte Ethernet and Wi-Fi support. Staring price for Inpiron 530N is 730 dollars US.

Today famous company Panasonic introduced new Blu-ray drive for personal computers.

The main characteristic of this model is the thickness. Panasonic is of the companies who who always tries to create device smaller then standard ones. First they released DVD drive with 12.7 mm thickness, second was 9.5 mm record and now its 7.0 mm. This was the beginning of the small DVD drive. Now company released 9.5 mm Blu-ray drive.

New model can read three types of media - BD, DVD and CD. Also it can read and write four types of the Blu-ray disks - BD-R, BD-RE, BD-R DL, BD-RE DL and read BD-ROM. Further more it supports regular DVD-RAM, DVD±R, DVD±RW, CD-R, CD-RW formats and reads DVD-ROM and CD-ROM disks.

For the past few days Internet brought us many different news about NVIDIA GeForce 9800/9600 which built on the new G100 video processor.

The latest news is that new NVIDIA video cards will be build on the new c G100 chipsets which are more powerful than AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2. NVIDIA GeForce 9800 will come out in the March of 2008 with DirecX 10.1 support and throughput of the new video adapter will equal to 1 teraflop. The cheaper video cards built on the same G100 will come out in the end of next summer.

AMD Inc. announced release of the new video chipsets - R680, RV610 and RV630. World attention is caught by the new R680 chipset, because it made on the 55 nm technology. Although the older version of the same chipset R670 has same 55 nm technology new R680 has extra two CrossFire chipsets. By this step AMD tries to bring CrossFire on its feet and gain the power in the video gaming industry.

The other two chipsets - RV610 and RV630 also built on 55 nm technology. Parameters of new chipsets look good only on the paper, because not one of them had been fully tested. Global markets will receive video cards with new chipsets only next month.

Gygabyte introduced new motherboard based on newest Intel X48 chipset X48T DQ6. This motherboard look similar to the previous version X38 DQ6, but North Bridge has bigger heat sink on it.

New motherboard support 0.5x multiplier which means for example with Q9550 processor we can change multiplier to 6x, 6.5x, 7x, 7.5x, 8x, 8.5x. The most advance change in the motherboard is that Gygabyte integrated DES technology. DES is similar to the EPU technology from ASUS which controls electrical power of the board. With DES technology board will save more energy on standby mode. Overall X48T DQ6 has more chipsets, DDR3-1900 support, «CrazyCool» heat sink on the back of the motherboard, dual BIOS technology and two PCIe 2.0 16x,

Intel introduced new motherboard built on the X38 Express chipset with ICH9R.

According to the releasers the new motherboard does not have legazy ports. such as PS/2, LPT and COM. Also DDR2 memory was replaced with DDR3 with 1333 Mhz frequency.

DX38BT supports all Intel processors even the one that built on the new 45 nm technology. Intel pointed out that even the hottest processor will work normally.

The most advance feature fo this model is overcloking ability. Intel uses new software that works on the chipset level and can be managed from the Windows. Intel Desktop Control 2.0 simplifies overclocking which can attract more users.

DX38BT motherboard has two PCIe x16 2.0 and one x4/x16 PCIe 1.0a. with ATI Crossfire support. Creators putted 8 channel Dolby Home Theater with Intel HD Audio technology and S/PDIF. On top of that they placed infrared port for controlling audio and video devices. Also this model support Matrix Storage technology (RAID 0,1,5,10 with new technology Intel Rapid Recover), 8 SATA ports and two eSATA ports (3Gb/s). Intel was not lazy to put two regular ATA connectors, two 1394a and 12 USB ports. Further more creaters placed Intel PRO 10/100/1000 adapter for the Internet connection.

The best part of this product is that along with the motherboard Intel putted free full version of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, which optimized for the Quad core processors.