AMD have informed us that they are putting up the price of their Radeon HD 5850, without however giving any information on the new price. According to our sources it will be a $20 increase, with the official price going from $259 to $279 (+7.7%), as against $379 for the 5870.
AMD says that costs (components, memory, logistics) have increased, citing the economic upturn as the cause. AMD says that a lot of its products have been affected but that only the price of the Radeon HD 5850 is likely to be readjusted.
Even if AMD’s costs have gone up, it’s probable that the main reasoning behind the price adjustment is a commercial one, AMD wanting to limit demand for the 5850 in favour of the more costly 5870, or simply so as to sell fewer cards at a higher profit.
Mushkin have two new DDR-3 PC3-12800 kits on sale. The kits are 8 or 12 GB of two or three bars of DDR3 at 1600 MHz. Voltage is a standard 1.65V and timings are as follows: 7-7-7-20. Here’s the detail of the kits (prices haven’t yet been given):
Guru3D has published photos of a graphics card previously announced by Sapphire: the Vapor-X version of the Radeon HD 5870. On the menu, an imposing reportedly efficient cooling system and a very slight default overclocking of the card. The Sapphire 5870 Vapor-X offers a core clocked at 870 MHz (instead of 850 MHz) and GDDR5 clocked at 2500 MHz (instead of 2400 MHz). Still according to Guru3D, availability has been announced for November 2009. Sapphire should also be bringing out a Vapor-X version of the Radeon HD 5850.
HighPoint has announced the release of two PCI Express 2.0 cards that allow you to bring the SATA 6Gbit/s standard to your PC. Known as the Rocket 620 and Rocket 622, these are two low profile cards with two SATA or eSATA ports respectively. Each port has a theoretical speed of 600 MB/s but the PCI-E x1 2.0 interface limits it to 500 MB/s in each direction. HighPoint has announced availability for November at $69.99 for the Rocket 620 and $79.99 for the Rocket 622.
Intel has temporarily removed firmware 02HA for its second generation X25-M SSDs, the "Postvilles". Several users had the disagreeable experience of seeing their SSD stop working after updating because of SMART errors that appeared after a first reboot in Windows 7. Another slap in the face for the Postvilles, then, after the problem with the original firmware that sometimes led to a loss of data if the password for the drive was used in the BIOS.
Note that the problem seems to come immediately after the first reboot: if you have already updated and had no problems after the first reboot then you shouldn't have any further problems.
Intel has temporarily removed firmware 02HA for its second generation X25-M SSDs, the "Postvilles". Several users had the disagreeable experience of seeing their SSD stop working after updating because of SMART errors that appeared after a first reboot in Windows 7. Another slap in the face for the Postvilles, then, after the problem with the original firmware that sometimes led to a loss of data if the password for the drive was used in the BIOS.