Western Digital launches its 1st SSD! Kingston HyperX LoVo: 1.25v ! 196.75 WHQL drivers from NVIDIA (Update) Photos of the GeForce GTX 470 and 480!

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Western Digital launches its 1st SSD!   Posted on 03/03/2010 at 18:13 by Marc

	After buying the SSD manufacturer, SiliconSystem, at the beginning of 2009 and taking on its catalogue under its own brand, Western Digital, maker of the Raptors, has today launched its own SSD designed not for business users but the general consumer. It’s called the WD SiliconEdge Blue. Available in 64, 128 and 256 GB versions, this new SSD uses MLC Flash NAND. With an SATA 3 Gbit/s interface and TRIM command support in Windows 7, it has sequential reads of 250 MB/s and writes of 170 MB/s (140 MB/s continuous). Random 4 KB access’ have been announced at 5000 IOPS for both reads and writes, or 20 MB/s. The controller is presumably a JMicron JMF612 with in-house firmware. In terms of energy consumption, WD has announced 0.6w in idle, 2.2w reading and 3.5w writing. Over 5 years these SSDs are announced as supporting a daily write volume of 17.5, 35 and 70 GB for the 64/128/256 GB versions. The RRP of the WD SSD SiliconEdge Blue 64 GB (SSC-D0064SC-2100) is €251, the 128 GB (SSC-D0128SC-2100) €442 and the 256 GB (SSC-D0256SC-2100) €801. The first tests show that performances in practice are similar to those of the now habitual Indilinx Barefoot / MLC SSD combo.

Kingston HyperX LoVo: 1.25v !   Posted on 03/03/2010 at 11:07 by Marc

	Kingston has today announced 4 new low energy consumption 2x2 GB DDR3 kits, the HyperX "LoVo". They stand out for their power supply voltages, which go down to 1.35 or even 1.25v : KHX1866C9D3LK2/4GX: DDR3-1866 CL9 1.35v / DDR3-1600 CL9 1.25v, €178 KHX1600C9D3LK2/4GX: DDR3-1600 9-9-9-27 at 1.35v, €139 KHX1600C9D3LK2/4GX: DDR3-1333 9-9-9-27 at 1.25v, €135 These memory modules have been designed for the Intel LGA1156 platform and come with XMP profiles. Kingston says that validation was carried out on an ASUS P7P55D Evo motherboard.

196.75 WHQL drivers from NVIDIA (Update)   Posted on 03/03/2010 at 10:01 by Marc

	NVIDIA has just made version 196.75 WHQL of its Windows 7 / Vista / XP drivers available. The PhysX API is now in version 9.10.0129 and the HD Audio driver in version 1.0.9.1 and its drivers support the new GT 320, 330 and 340. Among the innovations, note that problems in Prince of Persia Warrior Within, Crysis Warhead and BioShock 2 have been resolved. The limitation of the Ion platform at 1280x800 with a 2560x1600 screen has also been resolved. NVIDIA has also announced various performance gains: - Up to 13% gain (15% in SLI) in H.A.W.X. - Up to 30% gain (28% in SLI) in Left 4 Dead SLI profiles have been added for Assassin Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Zombie Driver, and the SLI profiles of World of Warcraft and Unigine have been improved. NVIDIA has also added Ambient Occlusion in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Need for Speed: Shift, Resident Evil 5, RUSE, and Street Fighter IV. Owners of GeForce 6,7,8,9,100,200 and Ion GPUs can get the drivers from the following links: - Windows 7 / Vista (32-bit / 64-bit) - Windows XP (32-bit / 64-bit Update: For information, after tests on the GTX 280 and GT240 in Crysis Warhead and H.A.W.X. in mono GPU, we only noted gains in H.A.W.X and only with the GT240.

Photos of the GeForce GTX 470 and 480!   Posted on 03/03/2010 at 00:00 by Marc

	At CeBIT some managed to get snaps of the forthcoming GeForce GTX 470 (TechConnect) and GeForce GTX 480 (via Xtremsys), the second of which was opened up for the occasion. You can see that the GTX 470 has 10 memory chips, against 12 for the GTX 480, which makes us think 1280 MB at 320 bits for the first and 1536 MB at 384 bits for the second. The GTX 480 is longer than the GTX 470 and comes with a power stage allowing up to 300 W (PCI-E 6 pins + PCI-E 8 pins), as against 225W for the 470 (2 PCI-E 6 pins). You’re no doubt more anxious to get your hands on our tests than these photos, but for that, you’ll have to wait until the official announcement on March 26th.