NEWS

OCZ Introduces Onyx2 range of SSDs

SAN JOSE, CA—September 27, 2010—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of highperformance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, has unveiled the OCZ Onyx 2 Series, a 2.5 inch SSD with superior affordability designed for mainstream desktops and mobile systems. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient solution, the Onyx 2 delivers excellent performance with lower price per gigabyte than that of other comparable drives on the market.

“While we are constantly looking to push the envelope in solid state drive performance, we are also dedicated to making the technology more affordable to consumers,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “The new Onyx 2 Series SSDs give customers the very best of both worlds when it comes to performance and value, and they are an ideal solution for mobile and desktop users that want to take advantage of all the benefits that SSDs offer over traditional rotational based drives.”

OCZ continues to expand its consumer SSD lineup with the goals of not only delivering cutting-edge performance, but also of making SSDs more affordable to help foster adoption of this game-changing technology. Designed to offer the best of both worlds, the SandForce-driven Onyx 2 delivers 270MB/s read, 265MB/s write, and up to 10,000 random write IOPS (4k aligned), without the higher costs normally associated with similar multilevel cell (MLC)-based solutions. The Onyx 2 SSD delivers an enhanced computing experience for netbooks, laptops, and home desktops with faster application loading, snappier data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life and feature TRIM support as the ultimate Windows 7 upgrade.

OCZ Onyx 2 SSDs feature a durable yet lightweight housing, and because they have no moving parts are more rugged than conventional hard discs. Available in ample 120GB and 240GB capacities, the Onyx 2 is an ideal hard drive replacement for first-time SSD upgraders in need of primary laptop storage or a spacious application and OS boot drive. Designed for superior reliability, Onyx 2 Series is backed by a 2-year warranty and renowned technical support.

KIngpIn COOlIng F1 gemInI pOt makes A Showing

There’s no denying that the most widely used (and probably the most celebrated) commercial POT in extreme overclocking circles is the F1 Dragon which has been with us for some time. While no info is available on the official website www.kingpincooling. com, we did manage to see the POT in “limited” action over at enthusiast forum www. xtremesystems.com where, Top ranked overclocker NickShih gave a preview and spoke highly of the new F1 Gemini.

It may not be available to buy yet, but check it out anyway, looks good and if what is said is correct, it’ll be the POT to have going into this new generation of CPUs.

http://www.xtremesystems. org/forums/showthread. php?t=259219

PRO takes PCmark05 record

Our in house extreme overclocker, Pro, recently managed to take the World record in PCMark05. The new WR is now set at 35,364. In his own words, “No TWEAKS, just pure raw frequency, and the way you love it! Gigabyte X58 GA-X58AUD3R, MSI 5870 Lightning, 4x Corsair force 60GB SSD, Corsair GTX2 RAM kit, 2x ANS-ACARD, ARECA 1280ML raid controller, 4x GIGABYTE I-RAMS, Corsair 1000W, Antec 1200OC and a bunch of beautiful old school CORSAIR DDR1 and DDR2 sticks, the UD3R able to bring all those components together and bench the CPU at good clocks!”

Well done to Pro and, keep pushing it.

GIGABYTE Previews P67 motherboard

GIGABYTE has shown off two P67 LGA 1155 Motherboards for INTEL’s upcoming Sandy Bridge CPUs. Not much to be said on the motherboards currently other than that they look to introduce a new colour scheme for the company. Both motherboards are mainly black/gun metal with gold accents on some heatsinks for the UD7 model and the traditional GIGABYTE BLUE for the UD5 model. The boards look packed with features, including what looks to be 4 USB3.0 ports. We are unsure at present if that means there are two controllers on the board or GIGAYTE has found a vendor that has a 4-port controller.

Right now the colour scheme seems to be polarizing the various online communities, but we suspect in due time it’ll grow on us all. As far as we are concerned the new scheme is a bold move for GIGABYTE and a welcome change for us the end users. As usual, we will keep you posted on further developments.

AMD to release new CPUs

We would have loved to announce that AMD has pushed forward their release schedule for their next generation Bulldozer CPU’s however that isn’t the case and the “new” AMD CPUs are higher clocked versions of what we have before. What will be of interest to most readers here, will be the Phenom II 1100T BE, coming in at a 3.3GHz (Turbo up to 3.7GHz) but retaining the same 125W TDP. Lets’ hope this new CPU overclocks even better, than the 1090T.

This isn’t the only new CPU in AMD’s portfolio as the company has introduced a new Quad Core Phenom II X4 975 CPU which chugs along at an respectable 3.6GHz (No Turbo as it’s based on the older Deneb core) making it the highest clocked CPU to ever come from AMD.

The two remaining parts are Hex Core CPUs in the form of the 1065T and the 1045T. We will keep you posted on these “new” CPUs and take it through them through their paces once we get our paws on them.

Kingston Introduces V+ Series SSD’s using Toshiba Controller

Here’s another entry into the High Performance MLC SSD market. Kingston has introduced the V+ series of SSD’s available in capacities ranging from 64GB all the way to 256GB. These Drives claim respectable speeds of 230MB/ sec (Read) and 180MB/ sec (Write). The controller comes courtesy of Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller backed with some 128MB of cache. We will be putting this drive through its paces in our next issue and give you a full report at the time.

MSI MOA 2010 Winner

This year’s Annual MSI MOA Global final was won by none other than Team Expandable from Sweden represented by Elmor and ME4ME. The competition was tight with 2nd place team, from the Ukraine (Represented by cyclone and t0lsty) who had the fastest SuperPi 32M time of the day at 6m 20.688s but The Expendable’s 3DMark Vantage score of P37424 was far too much for all the entrants and thus they secured the victory. Well done to these two and we suspect we’ll see them again next year clocking up a storm.

Barts specs revealed looking good

As had been rumoured for some time, AMD (We’re still not convinced ‘AMD’ is a stronger brand than ATI in graphics, but that’s a discussion for another day) seems ready to launch their mid-range replacement for the Juniper core that is in the current 5700 series. The Barts GPU is obviously sniping for the competitor’s GF104 and GF108 GPUs, but from the leaked specs it looks to be superior in every department (we’ll reserve tessellation performance speculation for now). With a higher pixel-fill rate than the CypressXT, with some aggressive overclocking this could end up faster than current range topping Single GPU Radeon 5870. We await the Radeon HD6770 eagerly.

GiGaByte gooc 2010 coverd in november issue

Our resident hardware Guru - Pro took a trip to warm Taipei, Taiwan for the GOOC 2010 World Finals that took place just a couple of weeks after MSI’s MOA. Look forward to full coverage in the November issue of the magazine.