Computer manufacturer Gigabyte has previewed a mini-PC design. The new Brix computer, in a form factor similar to the Mac mini or the Intel NUC has what the company calls "the same power as a tower PC" and is expected for wide release later this summer with a UK release in the next month.
Gigabyte has revealed a pair of tablets at CES, both running Windows 8 instead of Windows RT. The S1185 is an 11.6-inch slate with a Full HD resolution IPS display, while the 10.1-inch S1082 tablet is aimed more at the business market rather than consumers, with its focus on energy efficiency and higher-capacities of storage.
At the Computex show in Taipei, Gigabyte showed off four smartphones that run on Android 4.0 and offer dual SIM card slots. The company is no stranger to such creations, with the G1355 introduced back in February, though it had Android 2.3 onboard. The range-topper from the newly-introduced phones is the GSmart M1420.
Gigabyte has revealed its new X11, a new 11-inch notebook that it is calling the world’s first all-carbon fiber notebook as well as the world’s lightest. The X11 weighs in at 975 grams, sliding it in under the 11-inch Apple MacBook Air. It is also just 3mm thin at its thinnest point and 16.5mm at its thickest.
Gigabyte has introduced several new notebooks, including two 14-inch ultrabooks and a 15.6-inch gaming notebook. The ultrabooks include two variants, the U2442N with standard-voltage Core i5 or i7 processors, and the U2442V with ultra-low voltage Core i5 and i7 chips for improved battery life.
Gigabyte has announced the newest member in its line of Android dual-SIM smartphones. The GSmart G1355 carries a 4.3-inch 480x800 touchscreen and runs Android 2.3. Pricing is kept down through performance, as it's powered by a single-core, 800MHz Snapdragon processor.
Gigabyte has lifted the lid (pdf) on a varied line-up of new hardware that targets a wide audience. The most notable is the 11-inch Booktop T1132N, which offers 3-in-1 functionality by doing duty as a notebook, tablet, and desktop. Also just announced are the T1006M, a 10.1-inch convertible tablet notebook, the 15-inch P232F Blu-ray gaming notebook and the Booktop M2432 notebook that also combines with a desktop docking station.
An Intel Core i7 processor has been paired with a Gigabyte motherboard to set a world record for overclocking multipliers. A six-core i7 3930K, which normally runs at 3.2GHz, was overclocked to 5.6GHz with a record multiplier of 57x. The Motherboard used with the i7-3930k was a Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 with an Intel X79 chipset and showed the relative headroom the gaming-focused platform has.
Intel's Thunderbolt for Windows PCs could arrive in April, purported insiders stated Monday night. Apple is reportedly helping Intel adopt the standard the two co-created, Digitimes heard. PC builders ASUS and Sony, as well as mainboard builders ASRock and Gigabyte, are expected to be part of the first wave.
iBuyPower has just unveiled a new mid-tier gaming PC in the Gamer Paladin HS11. It gets a quad 3.3GHz Core i5 and a 1.2GB NVIDIA GTX 570 graphics card, along with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB, 7,200RPM hard drive. There is also a Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 mainboard and a 120mm liquid cooling system that keeps it quiet and potentially gives headroom for overclocking.
Acer President Jim Wong has continued a string of comments on mobile late Wednesday with remarks expecting steep price drops in ultrabooks. Although they were sitting at $1,000 at the end of the year, the notebooks could get to between $799 and $899 by spring next year, he said with Digitimes in attendance. He fully expected prices to drop even steeper, down to just $499 in 2013.
Gigabyte has released an updated version of its signature convertible tablet. The T1132 features a rotating docking station and swiveling display that enables it to serve act as a notebook, tablet, or desktop. Driving the device is an Intel 1.6GHz processor that keeps it up to speed with newer ultraportables.
Gigabyte has unveiled two new devices at Computex 2011. The first is a new 10.1-inch tablet, the S1080 running Windows 7 on a platform packing a 1.66GHz dual-core Intel Atom N550 processor and 2GB of RAM. The second is the new M2432 Booktop with a bundled docking station that also packs a “desktop-class” GPU matched with 1GB of VRAM.
NVIDIA on Tuesday set out to lure more mid-range gamers and professionals by introducing both the regular, non-Ti version of the GeForce GTX 560 as well as a new Tesla card. The new card trips down just enough to drop the price down to $199 with 336 stream (visual effects) processors, 56 texture address units, and at least an 810MHz core clock speed, 1.62GHz effects shader clocks and 1GHz GDDR5 memory. While its core and texture unit counts are similar to the outgoing GTX 460, the newer design and higher clock speeds should make it noticeably faster.
Gigabyte has started taking orders for its S108 dual-core 1.66Ghz Atom-powered Windows 7 tablet in Taiwan. The device has a has a 10.1-inch LED capacitive multi-touch panel with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels. It comes standard with 2GB of DDR3 RAM and utilizes Intel’s GMA 3150 integrated graphics, while it features one USB 3.0 port in its array to deliver high-speed connectivity.
At the CeBIT show in Taiwan, ITProPortal found that the companies exhibiting were anxious to bring out ARM-based products running on Windows 8. This will include notebooks, tablets, mainboards and barebones PCs, with the first companies to do so likely to be those who already make ARM-based devices.
Gigabyte has released two new netbooks, the Q2005 and the M1005. Both of the 10-inch models center on Intel's dual-core Atom 1.5GHz N550. Windows 7 Starter or Home Premium. The netbooks are unusually configurable to 2GB of RAM, and as much as a 500GB hard drive.
Two mainboards were leaked online on Wednesday thanks to EXPreview, both with AMD's Zacate chip. The two mainboards are from Gigabyte and Soyo, and the Zacate E350 chip common to both sports a clock speed of 1.6GHz with an integrated Radeon HD 6310 graphics core. It will be designed for low-power desktops and nettops with just a peak 18W of power.
NVIDIA today confirmed its second-ever GeForce 500 series chipset in a push to bring its new graphics to the mainstream. The GTX 570 has the exact same 480 cores as the old GTX 480 but, through the refined architecture, runs at a higher 732MHz main clock speed, 1.46GHz clock for each core and a 1.9GHz memory clock. It uses a narrower 320-bit memory interface (down from 384 bits) but, due to the combined improvements, has a higher texture fill rate bumped up from 42 billion to 43.9 billion pixels per second.
NVIDIA today at last confirmed the existence of the GeForce GTX 580, its new graphics leader. The design jumps from 480 processing cores to 512 and adds 16 PolyMorph (hardware geometry tessellation) units that significantly boost the performance, especially when they can be fully used in DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1. In extreme cases, a GTX 580 can be up to 160 percent faster than a Radeon HD 5870 in a game like HAWX 2 and 62 percent faster in a DX9/DX10 game like StarCraft II.
Gigabyte Technology has introduced the Booktop T1125, a hybrid system that works as a tablet, notebook or desktop computer. The notebook/tablet portion features an 11.6-inch touchscreen panel, which swivels to expose a full-size keyboard. When the notebook is attached to the docking station, users can still view the 11.6-inch display or connect an external monitor.
AMD tonight kicked off the launch of a new graphics core generation by launching the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870. The designs are roughly on par with the performance of the outgoing 5850 but, through a new architecture, are considerably cheaper at $179 (6850) and $239 (6870) while still being more power efficient, particularly at idle. The chip designer claims a performance edge of as much as 30 percent over the GeForce GTX 460; the move has already forced NVIDIA to drop the GTX 460's average price to $199 to compete.
MSI in a low-key move has posted an update for its devices that gives most of them support for charging the iPad. The i-Charger fix gives many of its mainboards, along with its all-in-one desktops and notebooks, the 1.2 amps of current needed to charge Apple's tablet from their USB ports. It can automatically recognize when Apple's hardware is attached and step up from the usual 0.5 amps when needed.
PC maker Gigabyte has come up with a software driver for mainboard that can support the iPad's higher charging needs. Standard USB 2.0 ports on PCs will only charge the new Apple tablet when it's off, but not when running. Called the On/Off Charge driver update, the software will enable some of Gigabyte's most common AMD and Intel mainboards to charge the iPad using USB 2.0 in either state.
The first indication of the clock speeds of AMD's Thuban six-core chips for consumer PCs has been leaked on Friday. According to BIOS updates and CPU support lists released by Gigabyte, the six-core X6 1035T will be rated at 2.6GHz, while the X6 1055T will run at 2.8GHz and the top-rung, six-core AMD chip will be the Phenom II X6 1075T, with a 3GHz clock speed. This is significantly below the 3.33GHz frequency of Intel's fastest chip, the Core i7-980X, but doesn't necessarily reflect the actual performance gap.
Gigabyte's second Android phone has been given its first earnest look in a purportedly official unveiling. Nicknamed the "Codfish," the GSmart G1305 would be a full-touch device with a 3.2-inch display and a 5-megapixel camera. Despite its age, Android 1.6 would be the platform of choice and not 2.1, PointGPhone claimed.
The first GSmart-series cellphone from Gigabyte has been spotted, although unlike the range of Windows Mobile 6.5-powered handsets slated for an MWC debut, this one sports the Android operating system. Said to be using the 1.6 build of the software, the handset otherwise sports a 2.8-inch display with a 240x320 resolution and is powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm CPU. There is no 3G data network support, but a Wi-Fi radio is integrated.
Gigabyte has released a new beta BIOS for its GA-P55-UD4P motherboard, addressing problems with iPhone sync on certain Windows 7 systems. Issues are said to remain with ASUS and MSI motherboards, for which no patched software is available. People may nevertheless be able to solve errors by upgrading to the latest available BIOS and chipset drivers, or running Windows in Vista SP2 compatibility mode.
Motherboard and computer manufacturer Gigabyte Technology has introduced an Intel-designed notebook that runs on the Montevina platform, according to DigiTimes. The first device in the series, codenamed Peggy's Cove, offers a 13.3-inch display, along with 3G, Wi-Fi and WiMAX connectivity. The notebooks are part of Intel's Blanca program which provides design support for second-tier OEMs that build the systems for a variety of brand vendors.
DigiTimes reported on Wednesday that Compal Electronics reduced the budget and other resources for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) as the company believes the future of the market segment is uncertain. The report cites unnamed industry sources for the information, and Compal itself has confirmed that some of its MID focus was shifted into netbook development. It will continue to ship MIDs in smaller volumes.
While Intel's new GN40 graphics chipset for the Atom N280 CPU is, in theory, capable of playing back 1080p HD video, in practice it does not, thanks to the limitations placed upon it by Windows XP. As confirmed by Chinese website HKEPC, which reviewed a GN40-equipped ASUS EeePC 1004DN netbook with Windows XP, the configuration was not working properly in decoding 1080p video. This is due to XP only having DirectX Video Acceleration 1.0 (DXVA 1.0) available, whereas the GN40 requires DXVA 2.0 and DirectX 10. As virtually all netbooks ship with XP, the GN40's HD video playback ability goes largely wasted on the new system.
As promised, Taiwan-based Gigabyte came fully prepared to CeBIT in Germany, unveiling no less than one notebook, three new netbooks and a dock for one of them. The Gigabyte Touch Note M1028 has a 10.1-inch touchscreen that swivels, and all four variations are powered by Intel’s newer 1.66GHz Atom N280 processor. The 160GB hard drive is pre-loaded with Windows XP home, and 1GB of RAM is standard, though upgradable to 2GB.
Just ahead of the opening of the CeBIT show in Germany on Tuesday, Gigabyte has announced four new peripherals, with the leather-covered and Swarovski crystal-laden wireless GM-M7800S mouse, more conventional-looking GM-M8000 gaming mouse as well as the GK-K6800 multimedia and ultrathin GK-K7100 keyboards. The opulent GM-M7800S shares its maximum 1,600dpi resolution and other specs with the with the GM-M7800 2.4GHz wireless mouse, which is currently available but in a more traditional plastic dress.
At the CeBit show in Germany at the start of March, Taiwan's Gigabyte said it would show off three new 10-inch netbooks, including the M1028, M1024 and M1022. Little is known about the netbooks, other than that all have a 10-inch screen and that the M1028 is the only one that is sure to sport a rotating touchscreen display, allowing it to be used as a tablet PC, not unlike the company's M912 convertible netbook introduced last year.
GigaByte is getting ready to announce its new GSmart line of smartphones at next week's Mobile World Congress in Spain, which will be some of the first products to ship with the latest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5. At the show, the company will launch what it claims is the first smartphone with a DVB-T tuner that allows for the wireless transmission of digital audio, video and other data with the t600 handset. At the same time, the MS808 handset will be the first to bring together a DVB-T tuner, GPS functionality and 3G data network access into a smartphone.
AMD has begun the week early by launching a new mainboard chipset it hopes will bring gaming even to the lowest-cost systems. The 760G platform is designed to be mated with the Athlon X2 7000 and is pitched as one of the least expensive chipsets to be capable of DirectX 10 and full OpenGL 2 graphics. It comes with a Radeon HD 3000-era core that the chipmaker claims is much faster than Intel's own GMA 4500 architecture: an AMD run through of World of Warcraft has it running at 31 frames per second even at 1280x1024 with high detail, or about 63 percent faster than Intel's 19 frames per second.
Intel is prepping a new Atom processor whose platform will be significantly faster than any existing model, a new roadmap shows. The Atom N280 chip will only be slightly faster at 1.66GHz versus the N270's 1.6GHz but will jump the system bus from 533MHz to 667MHz, giving the chip more headroom for data. It should also introduce a much more modern integrated graphics chipset, the GN40, that brings the 3D and video features of modern Centrino 2-based notebooks to very small portables.
AMD marked the start of CES with the formal debut of the Phenom II, its first mainstream 45 nanometer processor. The upgrade is based on the same core "Shanghai" architecture as recent Opterons and gives a roughly 20 percent speed boost over the previous-best 2.6GHz chip through changes that involve an optimized design with more instructions handled per clock, 4MB of total extra cache, and support for up to the same 1,333MHz DDR3 memory as rival systems from Intel. The design is also now much more tolerant of high clock speeds and will run up to 3GHz in stock trim.
NVIDIA is in the process of porting the technology behind the GeForce 9400M to mainboards meant for Intel's Atom processors, alleged sources from PC builders claim. The MCP79 chipset, which sits at the heart of both the 9400M in newer MacBooks and the lower-powered 9300M, is said to be in conversion for the mini PC platform with the aim of improving graphics over Intel's existing but relatively limited GMA video. NVIDIA would first focus on hardware for nettops but would potentially expand to netbooks later on.
Good OS, makers of the gOS Linux operating system that debuted in computers sold at Wal-Mart, on Monday announced it will soon introduce its Cloud operating system that can give users near-instant access to Google, Yahoo and Windows Live services, as well as rich client applications and multimedia content. Good OS introduced the Cloud on a GigaByte touch-screen netbook at the Netbook World Summit kicking off today in Paris, and will begin including Cloud alongside Windows XP on the PC builder's tablets early next year. When users need to do access more hardware-intensive programs, they can go from Cloud to Windows XP.
Intel today at the start of its fall Developer Forum showed off a working example of a Moorestown-based device, putting the chipset on track for its 2009-2010 launch window. The chipmaker has yet to describe the device but reiterates that the technology should be much more effective for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and ultra-mobile PCs. Through a 45 nanometer process as well as a redesign of the processor itself, the idle power alone will represent just a tenth that of an Atom system today, Intel claims.
Intel's Classmate tablet convertible will make the transition to an individually available model through CTL, the third-party PC builder tells Engadget today. Much like its earlier effort with the non-touch Classmate, CTL will create a 2go PC version tailored more to the average home users than the students which make up the normal audience; the company is likely to use Windows XP or (if necessary) Vista in stores rather than the Linux used on some models and in direct online sales.
ASUS plans at least a pair of hardware upgrades to its Eee PC line that will point to the future of netbooks, the company's division manager Samson Hu said today. The executive now says the PC builder plans to unveil touchscreen Eee PC models at the Consumer Electronics Show in January; no details are available, but the company expects them to be catalysts for sales. It's unclear whether they would be tablet models or traditional folding designs, though Fujitsu and GigaByte both already have early models of their own.
AMD early Tuesday took its Radeon HD 4000-series chipsets into ultra budget territory with two video cards that promise better performance than their prices would suggest. The Radeon HD 4550 and Radeon HD 4350 have just 80 stream (effects) processors versus as much as 800 for the Radeon 4800 series but are still capable of full DirectX 10.1 and current OpenGL 2.x effects, rendering them some of the least expensive cards capable of their more advanced visuals. The new chipsets are also some of the only ones of their type to have 7.1-channel audio pass-through over HDMI and the option of DisplayPort.
AMD on Wednesday sought to please two extremes of computer users at once through the unveiling of its 790GX mainboard chipset. The platform is focused on gamers and includes a new southbridge chip that allows overclocking Phenom Black Edition processors without entering the BIOS; it also supports CrossFire for up to two add-in Radeon HD video cards. However, even entry users are accomodated, AMD says: the chipset integrates the new Radeon HD 3300, which is billed as the fastest onboard graphics system available. Tests have it competing with some recent stand-alone cards, while AMD says it can support both modern 3D effects as well as hardware decoding of 1080p video.
MSI this afternoon confirmed that it has finally begun shipping the Wind, its first mini notebook. Stores such as Amazon, Buy.com, Fry's, and Newegg are all receiving the 10-inch portables first and will initially receive basic versions with a three-cell battery and Windows XP Home. Versions with the longer-lived six-cell battery as well as those preloaded with Linux are due in September, the company says. The larger battery itself will be available separately at the same time.
Gigabyte today gave release info one of the first known ultra-mobile PCs using Intel's Atom processor. The M528 will first appear in the Taiwan area in late July and should be priced in the middle of the UMPC range at an equivalent of $750; the device centers around the extremely energy-efficient 800MHz version of the Atom that should extend battery life even with additional performance and features versus the earlier A110 chip.
Gigabyte has already revealed information about its upcoming entry into micro notebooks ahead of tomorrow's Computex show. The M912 separates itself from a slew of competitors from ASUS and others by switching to convertible tablet form. The 8.9-inch LCD can be left in a traditional notebook mode or spun around to be used as a touchscreen. The system itself will share the same 1.6GHz Atom CPU and 1GB of memory as many upcoming mini-PCs but will carry an unusually large hard drive, ranging between 120GB and 250GB depending on the exact model.
ASUS and Gigabyte have put an end to a legal battle almost as quickly as it began, says a report detailing the feud. The former company had filed a legal complaint with Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission arguing that Gigabyte slandered ASUS with photos implying poor quality mainboards and power-saving measures, but now says it will drop the matter following Gigabyte's willingness to publicly apologize for the accusations with a message in Sunday newspapers.
Early talks are underway to bring the Sugar interface from the One Laptop Per Child project's XO notebook to different PC builders, according to news from former OLPC executive and now Sugar Labs Foundation head Walter Bender. The spin-off company is now said to be discussing the use of Sugar with four "ultra low-cost" notebook makers who would use the front-end on top of the underlying operating system for computers targeted at children.
