Introduction and architecture
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 has been hailed by the green graphics giant as ‘the best graphics card that’s ever been made.’
That’s quite a claim, but bandying around phrases like ‘trivalent chromium plating’ and ‘injection moulded magnesium alloy’ in relation to its design means this expensive ol’ graphics card bears serious inspection.
So yeah, before we get into all the tech pornography that is the Nvidia GTX 690 reference design – here showcased by EVGA – and it’s technological make up, we do need to talk about that £830/$1000 price tag.
That’s a huge amount of money to spend on any PC component, and granted, 90% of us would never even think of dropping that much money on a graphics card. But there are people out there with a penchant for the fastest whatever available and with the means to purchase them.
We’ve already covered the £1,400 Intel Xeon E5-2687W, t[......]
Introduction
The Canon Pixma Pro-1 A3+ printer stands at the top of Canon’s Pixma Pro inkjet printer range. Priced at £799 in the UK and $999.99 in the US and aimed squarely at ‘serious’ professional photographers, the Pro-1 is pitched as the world’s first 12-ink system.
Strictly speaking, it houses 11 coloured inks (five of which are dedicated monochrome ones) plus Canon’s new ‘Chroma Optimizer’ that’s designed to cover the bumps between ink droplets, levelling the print surface and boosting its glossiness.
Similar to Canon’s previous range-topping A3+ printer, the Pixma Pro9500 Mark II, the Pixma Pro-1 uses Lucia pigment inks for improved fade resistance. Light fastness for Canon semi-gloss Photo Paper Plus is rated at 80 years, with prints on the same paper stock stored in an album said to last over 200 years.
With a capacity of 36ml, each of the Canon Pixma Pro-1′s 12 ink tanks holds 2.5[......]
A highly portable, Intel-powered laptop – isn’t that an Ultrabook? Well not in the case of the Pavilion m6.
It’s a 15.6-inch notebook that loses out from conforming with Intel’s Ultrabook spec by virtue of various factors – not least the fact it has a standard large capacity hard drive rather than an SSD.
It’s a powerful thing, with a whopping 8GB of memory and a next-generation Intel Core processor.
Up against the also new HP Envy Ultrabook, the m6 doesn’t look a whole lot different – meaning you get a really thin and powerful notebook for a perfectly reasonable outlay. You also get a numeric keypad as well as a fingerprint reader for added security.
As you’d expect from an HP mainstream entertainment laptop, it features Beats Audio and can come with beefed-up discrete graphics should you choose that option. Eight hours of battery life is promised, though we’re really not sure you’d actu[......]
While many USB flash drives and external hard drives come with their own encryption software to help you protect your data in case the physical drive gets stolen, very few go to the lengths of iStorage to protect your information and files.
The iStorage diskAshur DT comes with ‘military grade’ 256-bit AES hardware encryption, making it all but impossible for people to see and access your data without a password. Plus the iStorage diskAshur DT, as with the iStorage datAshur USB stick and the iStorage DiskGenie external hard drive, comes with a built-in physical pin pad.
So before someone can even access the folder in Windows or another operating system, they have to type in a six to 16 digit PIN number. It might seem like a bit of overkill if you’re just storing MP3s and photos, but if you’ve got professional or personal data that could be highly valuable to thieves, then this extra layer[......]
There’s more to the notebook market than just Ultrabooks, you know? That’s the message from HP at least, who unleashed its "smallest and lightest ever" business PC over at a press event in Shanghai – the HP EliteBook 2170p.
Weighing just 1.3kg with a 11.6-inch display, the HP EliteBook 2170p is designed for the man-about-town type – presumably HP thinks that its compact size makes it perfect man-bag fodder. "But why isn’t it an Ultrabook?" we hear you cry. The answer to that is simple – it’s a chunky monkey.
We didn’t have our tape-measure to hand, but we can assure you that it’s a fair bit fatter than the 18mm maximum that Intel states 13.3-inch and smaller displays need to fall under to qualify for the slimline Ultrabook tag.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just because it doesn’t gain entry to the current notebook cool-club, that doesn’t mean it’s not a notable[......]
Design and interface
UPDATE: We’ve now plugged our preview full of video, new hands on photos and more information on sections within the world’s most hyped Android phone… so check out all our new findings.
There’s something so refreshing about seeing such fervour about a phone that’s not prefaced with an ‘i’ – so it’s almost an honour to be one of the first publications to get a proper hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S3.
While the Korean firm has been subject to the same clamour for information as Apple, which will have pleased the now-largest smartphone maker after years as an also-ran in the mobile phones space, it’s not been in the same league as the Cupertino lot when it comes to secrecy.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been snapped multiple times in leaks – some more accurate than others, it has to be said – and the specs mooted have turned out to be pretty bang on.
But that doesn’t matter[......]
Introduction
Most compact digital cameras are depressingly identikit, so our spirits lift when a manufacturer attempts a different approach. But is the 16 megapixel Pentax Optio VS20 trading on gimmicks?
In a first of its kind for a compact camera, it offers two shutter release buttons, zoom levers and tripod attachment screws. One set is on the top and bottom plates – as normal – while the second set is on the left and right flanks.
The theory is that the essential controls are readily to hand, whether shooting with the camera held vertically or horizontally.
Less eccentric is the fact that the camera packs in a 20x optical zoom – thereby propelling the Pentax Optio VS20 into the ever-burgeoning travel zoom category – even if the body that surrounds it is thicker in depth than most competing models with as big a lens.
Supported by sensor-shift anti-shake, this provides a very useful focal[......]
Introduction and benchmarks
Nvidia has just released its second tier Kepler graphics card and the Zotac GTX 670 AMP! Edition is first to the punch trying to muscle in on the top-table.
The standard Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 is quite a performer in its own right, with the same GK104 GPU as in the top Kepler card, the Nvidia GTX 680. That chip has only been slightly pared-back with a single SMX module having been removed.
That means it’s running fewer CUDA cores, but with 1,344 of those wee processors still humming away inside the GTX 670′s GPU it still manages some impressive performance figures.
Nvidia, however, has allowed board manufacturers, like Zotac here, to play around with the reference PCB from the get-go, and that means we get factory overclocked cards at launch.
Praise be to Nvidia for that, because the Zotac GTX 670 AMP! Edition is one hell of a graphics card.
Compared with the rather[......]
Introduction and architecture
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 is here to make a real name for the Kepler architecture in the more mainstream segment of the graphics card market.
Since we saw the first Kepler card, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 680, in cool, crisp sunny San Francisco, we’ve been itching to get our mitts on the more sensibly priced versions of the new architecture.
The GTX 680 is still sitting over the £400/$500 mark a few months after release and, given the Nvidia GTX 580 didn’t have to drop its price throughout its lifespan, we doubt it will change much.
Since then we’ve seen the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 tip up, the graphics equivalent of the race spec sports car, all injection-moulded magnesium and multiple GPUs.
But at £830/$1,000 that exceptional card is beyond the financial realms of the typical PC gamer.
So a cut-down version of the GTX 680 is what we’ve been after, and what we’ve kno[......]
Introduction
Apart from its slender dimensions (37 x 430 x 194.5mm), the Samsung BD-E6100 is typical Samsung Blu-ray fare when judged purely on looks; flimsily built, but dressed in a gloss black brushed finish, it performs another brand signature by seeming awfully good value for money.
Much of that impression is down to its skill with both 2D and 3D Blu-ray discs, although Samsung’s Smart Hub services will be just as appealing to some. It’s a service that’s been challenging Sony’s net TV efforts for domination over the last few years, but we do have a few worries about the direction it’s headed in.
It’s no longer just a place for apps and on-demand video, with the home screen dominated by shortcuts to Samsung Apps, Your Video, Family Story, Fitness and Kids.
Underneath all of that are shortcuts to second-rung apps, which can be customised. They include Twitter, Vimeo, Teletext Holidays, Y[......]