Good afternoon all, hopefully the return to work from the weekend hasn’t been too hard on you. Things are going quite well here, even the weather seems to have cheered up a little. Anyway, every Monday afternoon we post a list of our special offers for the week. It means you guys have as long as possible to check things out before deciding if you’d like to pick them up while they’re at a reduced price.
Anyway, this week we’ve got a few really nice bits and pieces on offer, including Intel’s X25 SSD, Belkin’s Gigabit Powerline HD starter kit, a Radeon 5670 and a Pioneer surround setup.
Intel X25:
For a very long time indeed, the SSD was a very expensive option indeed, but Intel has attempted to remedy that, offering solid-state storage on a wider scale for less-than-bankrupting sums… which is always nice.
Click through to see our page for Intel's X25 80GB SSD 🙂
Intel’s X25 is, in case anyone missed it, a solid-state drive. As with the vast majority of SSDs, it’s a 2.5-inch drive, so it should fit into a laptop without any real bother. Moreover, because it’s solid-state you’ll see faster read and write speeds than most standard hard-drives, which should mean a quicker boot… which is always nice. Your data will also be that bit more secure when it comes to the drive being knocked around a little in transit, thanks to the fact that the drive has no moving parts.
All in all, it’s a solid drive, and one that we’re genuinely pleased to be able to have on offer, because it’s attracted an awful lot of attention over the last couple of months.
Intel’s X25 80GB SSD is down to €199 this week, which isn’t bad at all when you consider the upsides of a nice SSD.
Over the course of the last couple of months, we’ve been hearing an awful lot from Nvidia. While a lot of that attention has been focused on the upcoming release of Nvidia’s second generation Tegra (for now still tentatively referred to as “Tegra 2”), there’s been more and more focus on the upcoming GF100.
The card itself looks a little bulky...
For now, there are a few fairly vital bits and pieces that we just don’t know about the GF100, but there’s still enough floating around to get a very solid picture indeed of what Nvidia is going with the new hardware. For those who are saying, as Shelton did, “Wait… what happened Fermi?” there’s at least the fact that we’re told the GF-100 is Fermi-derived, so we know it has that history behind it at least.
In Simple Terms:
For now, we don’t know the clock-speed of the GF100, and as a result there’s precious little to know about the power consumption for now, except that it’s already been noted to be a little heavier on power than Nvidia’s own GT200.
Still, before we get bogged down in technical terms, we can help to explain a bit about the GF100 and why there’s so much fuss about it since CES, in terms that just about anyone can understand. It’s relatively simple, but it seems as though very few people have actually tried to describe the GF100 in simple terms.
GF100 was initially just the codename, many have pointed out that it doesn’t stand for GeForce, as some expected, but for Graphics-Fermi. Still, it looks as though the moniker has stuck, and Nvidia could well launch the card as GF100. It was originally meant to be released last year, but rumour has it that due to unusually low yields it’s been bumped back, with many expressing fears that the release date is still looking a little hazy now, despite the fact that Nvidia is saying we’ll see it in March.
AMD had a pretty poor start to the week as news filtered out over why the expected release of their ATI Radeon HD 5830-based reference boards failed to take place as planned on Monday. Apparently the folks in charge decided to recall the affected boards for further testing after a “last minute issue” cropped up during the validation process. The issue in question is reported to be related to circuits on the board which are triggering an error on card makers’ software testing platforms.
With video card competition growing, AMD didn’t need this headache with the HD 5830.
Slashgear make the point that with “video card competition is hotting up right now” the last thing a company wants is unexpected problems with their new product. AMD, “declined to comment on the recall rumors” and indeed claimed the Radeon HD 5830 is undergoing the regular batch of testing any graphics chipset would go through.
With the Intel Core 2 finding itself phased out late last year, the Core i3 – along with Core i7 and Core i5 – has been released to generally good reviews thus far. Considering how utterly successful the Core 2 processors were Intel has a lot of eyes focusing on their work this time around. However, as we sifted through some of the reviews out there of the i3 530 and 540 since their release a few weeks back, it became clear that Intel has met most expectations.
Early reports on Intel’s Core i3 capabilities have been positive
The two Core i3 models are dual-core, hyper-threading-equipped CPUs with 3MB shared L3 cache which is DDR3-1066-compatible. While most run-downs on the merits of the new range note that the Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs are “intended to be slower” than the i7, they are considerably cheaper to boot.
Good evening all, with night time managing to stay away until just when we’re leaving work, I think it’s safe enough for us to say that we’re through the best part of Winter now and into the Spring, which is always pleasant. It’s a relatively simple pleasure, but it’s hard to deny.
Anyway, these are some of the bits and pieces that have cheered us up over the course of this week. We think the technically inclined will probably enjoy this piece from ATI that’s meant to show off the fact that any old primate can open up a PC and change a GPU
Aside from that, I suppose this is one of the best things I’ve seen in a very long time… when I complained about the snow in Dublin last week to my sister, she told me that if they got snow down in Kerry she would put me to shame. I took it as a throwaway comment, but it seems as though she was totally serious.
My sister built this... I think that she's now surpassed me in every way 😦
So, with the recent release of Intel’s latest line of processors, the Core i3 line, we’ve had an awful lot of requests from people hoping we’d put together a solid Core i3 build on a reasonable budget. I was going to ask Ryan from our RMA department about this, but then I remembered that every time I say the word “budget” he tries to fit as much as humanly possible into the build.
Instead, myself and the entirely more reasonably minded and generally stable Shelton sat down and went over the various bits and pieces we’d like to see in a Core i3 build with a vague budget of €1,000. We initially agreed to be a little loose with the budget, but Shelton decided to get strict when we were over by three cent…
Anyway, without any further delay, here’s the build we’ve come up with 🙂
CPU:
The CPU is what’s prompted this whole build, so we figured it might be best to make sure we got it out of the way as early as possible. It’s an Intel Core i3-540, which will probably say enough to those of you who’ve been keeping a close eye on it, but for those who haven’t bear with us.
Click through to check out our page on Intel's Core i3 🙂
The Core i3-540 is a dual core, socket 1156 processor with a 4MB L3 cache. It’s a solid arrangement, but for those who are interested in getting as much detail as possible, you’d do well to check out this (quite long winded) but very in-depth piece from XbitLabs, which goes into a tremendous amount of detail about Intel’s current processor line up.
Aside from all that, the Core i3-540 weighs in at €135.
Happy new year everyone, hopefully you’re all as warm and well as we are here, despite the icy conditions surrounding Komplett towers. The big thaw is on, everyone is back to work and with it we’ve got some special offers we thoughts you might be interested in… for the “back to work” vibe.
This week, we’ve got a gorgeous display, a graphics card and a netbook bundle on offer. We won’t stall any longer, here are the products themselves.
Samsung 21.5” LCD Syncmaster 2233SN:
Samsung’s flair for design is something that comes up time and time again when we talk about displays. The fact is that they’re not the cheapest when it comes to hardware, but the kit is well worth the asking price when you factor in how good it looks.
Click through to see our page for the Samsung Syncmaster 2233SN 🙂
Samsung’s Syncmaster 2233SN is a 21.5-inch, widescreen display with a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080, which should mean you’re not hampered at all when it comes to viewing high-definition content or playing games. The response time is low at 5ms, so sports fans and gamers should be well catered to.
The case is a glossy black, tapering to a transparent bevel along the bottom of the display, with a nice, slim stand to prop the whole thing up. It’s relatively simple, but gives the whole affair a classy kind of a feel that many other displays don’t quite manage.
Intel has been focusing on graphics more and more lately, and while the announcement that Larrabee will likely never see the light of day was a bit of a blow, the latest news from the chip giant is more interesting.
Intel’s line of integrated graphics processors has managed to gain enough traction to make Intel (even if only technically) the biggest supplier of graphics hardware on earth. Still, when most gamers talk about Intel’s graphics setups, the terms used aren’t generous, but it seems as though Intel is lining up a new IGP to add some much needed oomph to its line-up.
Reports indicate that Intel and Nintendo could well be in talks over the future of the gaming giant’s home console efforts, with Intel apparently pushing to supply the chips to power the successor to Nintendo’s Wii.
The news comes from a widely circulated report from the Japanese publication Impress Watch, but given the fact that my Japanese is hazy at best, we’ve gone with TomsGuide’s interpretation of the news. According to the report, Intel has been “trying to push Nintendo into using its Larrabee graphics processor,” which is interesting enough in itself, given the uncertainty surrounding Larrabee at the moment.
Nvidia is already hard at work on a second-generation version of its ION platform for netbooks with a need for high-end graphics. Word of a second generation ION follows news of Intel’s next-generation Atom line.
Nvidia’s ION has a bit of a love-hate relationship with Intel. The ION itself is powered, at its core, by an Intel Atom processor, so the whole point for Nvidia is that it has to stay nice and tight with Intel when it comes to compatibility and getting its hands on processors. At the same time, the company is competing directly with Intel in the netbook space for graphics with its GMA line.
Komplett Ireland 
Review of the Reviews: Intel Core i3
January 19, 2010We trawl the net so you don’t have to…
With the Intel Core 2 finding itself phased out late last year, the Core i3 – along with Core i7 and Core i5 – has been released to generally good reviews thus far. Considering how utterly successful the Core 2 processors were Intel has a lot of eyes focusing on their work this time around. However, as we sifted through some of the reviews out there of the i3 530 and 540 since their release a few weeks back, it became clear that Intel has met most expectations.
Early reports on Intel’s Core i3 capabilities have been positive
The two Core i3 models are dual-core, hyper-threading-equipped CPUs with 3MB shared L3 cache which is DDR3-1066-compatible. While most run-downs on the merits of the new range note that the Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs are “intended to be slower” than the i7, they are considerably cheaper to boot.
(more…)
Tags:CES 2010, core 2, cpu, Gigabyte, GPU, i3 core, i5 core, intel, mainboard, motherboard, MSi, processor, virtualisation
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