Thursday, September 13, 2012

NVIDIA ticks budget boxes with the $229 GeForce 660 and $109 GeForce 650

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/13/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-650/

NVIDIA announces its lowest priced Kepler cards the $229 GeForce 660 and $109 GeForce 650

NVIDIA's had some trouble shaving its Kepler GPUs down to an entry-level price point, but it looks to have put the problem behind it with the new GeForce 660 and 650 graphics cards. The company's ambition was to coax impoverished gamers clinging to DirectX9 (and to a lesser extent, 10) into switching up to this wallet-friendly pair of low-end units.

The 660 has been designed to be the "weapon of choice" for budget gamers. It'll play most games at reasonably high settings, thanks to its 2GB of RAM, 960 CUDA Cores and GPU Boost, which automatically overclocks the silicon according to the demands of your software. While we'll wait for real-world benchmarks, the company expects four-times the performance of the GeForce 9800GT, claiming games like Borderlands 2 and Guild Wars 2, in a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 will play at frame rates of 51fps and 41fps with full 3D, respectively

The 650 is the company's self-proclaimed "gateway" into gaming, being the lowest-priced Kepler it's planning to produce. Unlike the other cards in the range, it lacks GPU Boost, but the company left six-pin power on the card, giving card makers 64W to push the "good overclocker" 1GHz units all the way to 1.2GHz. It's got 1GB of DDR5 RAM, which will apparently handle even the newest games at mid-range levels of detail with its 384 CUDA Cores. The pair! are ava ilable from today, with companies like Maingear and Origin already announcing discounted desktops for them to nestle inside.

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NVIDIA ticks budget boxes with the $229 GeForce 660 and $109 GeForce 650 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Envy Spectre XT review: a sleek and speedy Ultrabook with a killer keyboard

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/13/hp-envy-spectre-xt-review/

DNP  HP Envy Spectre XT a 13inch Ultrabook

HP's Envy 14 Spectre hit almost all the right notes when we reviewed it back in March, thanks to its high-res display, sleek metal-and-glass design and brisk performance, but a stiff trackpad and the steep $1,400 price were clear downsides. The new Envy Spectre XT, a 13.3-inch Ivy Bridge-powered Ultrabook, has a thinner, lighter profile than its big brother, and a lower $1,000 price tag to match. That's still not chump change, though, so does the XT deserve a spot in the top tier of Intel-approved ultraportables? Join us past the break for the full breakdown.

Continue reading HP Envy Spectre XT review: a sleek and speedy Ultrabook with a killer keyboard

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HP Envy Spectre XT review: a sleek and speedy Ultrabook with a killer keyboard originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel's Core i3 NUC mini-boards set to hit market in October, power up hobbyists and OEMs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/13/intels-core-i3-nuc-mini-boards-set-to-hit-market-in-october-po/

Intel's Core i3 NUC miniboards set to hit market in October, power up enthusiast projects

Intel has finalized the specs of its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) board, and announced it'll go on sale in October for less than $400 with a case and power supply. Carrying a 4 x 4-inch form factor between a Raspberry Pi and mini-ITX board, it'll be equipped with a Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor, HD 4000 graphics, two SO-DIMM sockets, an M-SATA slot for an SSD drive, three USB ports, one HDMI port and a mini-PCI slot for wireless connectivity. Two different models will be offered by the chip giant, identical except that one will be Thunderbolt equipped and the other will sport an ethernet port for connectivity. Originally intended for the kiosk and signage markets, enthusiast interest compelled Intel to put the board on general sale, along with a case (pictured above) and power supply option. That'll pit it against offerings from VIA and others, while offering considerably more oomph in a similar form factor -- though a mini-server slaying Core i5 option originally proposed by Intel was dropped.

[Image credit: PC World]

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Intel's Core i3 NUC mini-boards set to hit market in October, power up hobbyists and! OEMs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Supercomputer built from Raspberry Pi and Lego, managed by humans rather than Minifigs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/13/supercomputer-built-from-raspberry-pi-and-lego/

Supercomputer built from Raspberry Pi and Lego, managed by humans rather than Minifigs

If you're a computational engineer, there's no question about what you do with the Raspberry Pi: you make a supercomputer cluster. Researchers at the University of Southampton have followed their instincts and built Iridis-Pi, a tiny 64-node cluster based on the Raspberry Pi's usual Debian Wheezy distribution and linked through Ethernet. While no one would mistake any one Raspberry Pi for a powerhouse, the sheer number of networked devices gives the design both some computing grunt and 1TB worth of storage in SD cards. Going so small also leads to some truly uncommon rackmounting -- team lead Simon Cox and his son James grouped the entire array in two towers of Lego, which likely makes it the most adorable compute cluster you'll ever see. There's instructions to help build your own Iridis-Pi at the source link, and the best part is that it won't require a university-level budget to run. Crafting the exact system you see here costs under £2,500 ($4,026), or less than a grown-up supercomputer's energy bill.

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Supercomputer built from Raspberry Pi and Lego, managed by humans rather than Minifigs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here's a Side-By-Side Comparison of a Picture Taken with the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S [Iphone 5]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5942810/heres-a-side+by+side-comparison-of-a-picture-taken-with-the-iphone-5-and-the-iphone-4s

Here's a Side-By-Side Comparison of a Picture Taken with the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4SThough we won't get an official side-by-side comparisons of the camera in the iPhone 4S and the new iPhone 5 until we get our hands on it, this is about as close as it gets: Scott Everett, from Dpreview, took nearly the same picture of Big Sur that Apple has been using in its iPhone 5 sample gallery with his own iPhone 4S. It's the first head to head look of the camera in the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S.

It's a remarkable coincidence that's astutely analyzed by Dpreview and they've discovered that the iPhone 5 (though listed as having a similar spec'd camera) actually has a different sensor than the 4S. Dpreview compared the EXIF data and saw that the iPhone 5 was able to drop to ISO 50, which means "for images taken in such bright light, this strongly suggests the newer model has a lower minimum sensitivity." Also, Dpreview suggests that the iPhone 5 has a slightly larger sensor than the iPhone 4S when digging deeper into the EXIF data.

From our perspective, there seems to be a little more detail in the iPhone 5 but that could be a lot of different factors in play (time of day, etc.). I definitely prefer the look of the iPhone 5 camera more but on first glance, it doesn't seem as significant a jump as the the iPhone 4 camera to the 4S camera was (and definitely not 3GS to 4). Of course, this isn't a real hands-on comparison and it's not taken at night where we can see if the iPhone 5 has improved low light performance, but it does give you the idea of what the 4S and 5 are capable of. Check out the real photos of the two iPhones at Dpreview.

Also, be sure to read Dpreview's take on this comparison picture and check out their whole take on the iPhone 5 camera too. [Dpreview]

Here's a Side-By-Side Comparison of a Picture Taken with the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4SUpdate: Gizmodo reader Darshan Meda just sent me the picture he took of Big Sur with an iPhone 4 and I've added it in for reference. Again, there will be obvious differences (given the different times each picture was taken) but you get the general gist

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