Posted: January 28th, 2008 | Author: Daniel Georges | Filed under: sideblog | Tags: , FDD, flash, HDD, Hybrid, Seagate | No Comments »
Seagate have released their new notebook drive, but did you notice something? It doesn’t have a larger then normal amount of flash memory. There are currently hybrid drives by companies such as Samsung, but reviews have shown that the increase is negilable. Why pay more for nothing?
Seagate have the same idea in their head. The Inquirer had a chance to talk to Joni Clark, a senior product marketer at Seagate who believed that hybrid drives are a little way off and flash disk drives don’t offer the performance that was originally expected.
What is Seagate’s solution to this problem? Joni believes its in their upcoming model which “is fast and will blow anything that’s out there today out of the water.” Lets hope that this ground breaking technology will also be affordable.
For more info, spin over to The Inquirer.
Posted: December 15th, 2007 | Author: Daniel Georges | Filed under: Technology | Tags: AMD, ATI, crossfire, graphics card, HD 3450, Hybrid, Phenom, radeon, RS780, RV620, saving power | No Comments »
One of the things that is always using more and more power as time goes on is your video card. There are even dedicated power supplies made especially for the purpose of powering your behemoth configurations. Didn’t the graphics card industry get the memo? We are suppose to be aiming to use less power!
That is exactly what ATI aim to do with a new Hybrid Crossfire system. The concept is very simple, when you don’t need high end gaming graphics, the top end card will be disabled, therefore saving power. When you need that power again it is there for the taking.
This concept has been done previously on Sony Vaio notebooks, with the ability to disable the addon Nvidia video card, and use the onboard Intel card. Difference this time, is it seems it is made for desktops and more focused at the people who want to lower the power bill for those PC’s (like mine) that are left on all the time.
ATI has shown off its capability to PC Perspective, with a test system containing a 2.2GHz Phenom processor, a RS780 (never heard of it) integrated graphics chipset and a RV620-based card labeled HD Radeon 3450. The configuration was quite impressive with frame rates of 30-35fps for Call of Duty 4 and Unreal Tournament 3, which then jumped to around 55fps when hybrid mode was enabled.
AMD are aiming for a 2008 release, with the initial batch of hybrid CrossFire-capable cards to be priced around $50. It is not yet known whether it will be available in notebooks, but my magic 8 ball says the chances are good.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
