Posted 11/03/09 at 08:00:54 AM by Paul Lilly

Acer's been talking up a storm about its future notebook plans and how it's going to take on the likes of Dell and HP, and it begins with the release of the Aspire AS8940G-6865 with an 18.4-inch display and Intel Core i7 720QM processor.

Driving the large screen display is an Nvidia GeForce GTS 250M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated memory. Other specs include 4GB of DDR3-1066 memory, a 500GB hard drive, 4X Blu-ray drive, multi-card reader, 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N WiFi, five USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and eSATA ports, and Windows Home Premium 64-bit.

"This new Aspire notebook offers multimedia enthusiasts the ultimate in mobile entertainment -- cinematic quality sound and visuals, an industry-leading feature-set, and the performance to handle demanding digital media," said Preeta Anil, Product Manager, Notebooks for Acer America. "The addition of Intel's new Core i7 processor further boosts the power and performance of the Aspire AS58940G for games, movies, videos, and more."

Acer says its new notebook will be available for purchase in time for the holiday season for $1,350. Not a bad price for the hardware.

Read More

Posted 11/02/09 at 11:01:00 AM by Paul Lilly

Let's be realistic for a moment. Few would classify Maingear's new Shift series as supercomputers for the homestead, but we'll give Maingear this much: these new PCs pack a punch.

"The Shift bucks the trend of plastic, bloated, commodity PCs. It's a statement of our commitment to performance, reliability, and support," said Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of Maingear. "Featuring vertical airflow, all the cooling necessary for today's high performance, and backed by the best technical support team in the business, Maingear is committed to maintaining our lead in the market."

The configurable PCs come built around your choice of Intel's P55 or X58 platform and come with a Core i7 800 series or 900 series CPU. DDR3 memory options include up to 8GB on the P55 platform, or up to 24GB in the X58 setup. You can choose from a plethora of videocards culminating in a pair of dual-GPU GTX 295s, and for storage duties, Maingear will slap up to 6 mechanical or 12 SSD drives into your rig. Other options include Blu-ray, liquid cooling, Razer peripherals, Killer NIC Xeno Pro card, and of course Windows 7.

Maingear promises each Shift system will ship with no bloatware, and they've all been tuned to take advantage of GPGPU computing.

The new PCs are available now starting at $2,200 (P55) and $2,600 (X58). In Q4, Maingear says it will add a Xeon-based setup with Nvidia's Quadro graphics to the lineup.

Read More

Posted 10/05/09 at 05:37:49 PM by Jason Barry

Intel has kicked off a PC Mod contest to help generate some publicity and enthusiasm over the new Core i7 and Core i5 processors. Not that Intel needs to drum up any excitement about the processors; most enthusiasts have been anticipating them for quite some time.

The contest involves building, or modding, a computer with the new technology and submitting photos of your build to Intel. There will be a preliminary judging by Intel and sponsors and the top mods will be sent to the People’s Choice finals where the public can vote on the mod they like the best.

You can get more details at the Intel Core i7 Custom Challenge site. The deadline for submissions is November 16th and voting begins November 23rd.

Read More

Posted 10/02/09 at 11:10:46 AM by Paul Lilly

Proving that a mini tower can pack a punch, Dell this week released a new Vostro desktop for small businesses that makes use of Intel's latest processors.

Released yesterday, Dell's Vostro 430 desktop comes standard with an Intel Core i5 750 processor (2.66GHz, 8MB L3 cache), 1GB of DDR3-1333 memory, an 80GB hard drive spinning at 7200RPM, an ATI Radeon HD 4350 videocard with 512MB of onboard memory, and Windows Vista Home Basic. From there, virtual system builders can opt to add more muscle in the form of an Intel Core i7 870 processor (2.93Ghz, 8MB L3 cache), up to 4GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, and an Nvidia GeForce GTS240 videocard with 1GB of memory.

At $700 and up, the new Vostro is a little more than what small business owners are accustomed to paying for Dell's Vostro line, which typically run between $300 and $400, but the 430 is the only one to be built around Intel's latest architecture.

Read More

Posted 09/28/09 at 02:19:28 PM by Paul Lilly

More proof that Intel's P55 platform packs enough punch to satisfy power users and mainstream users alike, MSI's P55-GD80 motherboard helped Taiwan overclocker Coolater set a new Core i7 overclocking record. Using the aforementioned board, Coolater was able ramp up his 2.8GHz Core i7 860 CPU all the way to 5.39GHz.

"The MSI P55-GD80 owes much of its outstanding overclocking ability to its equipped MSI-exclusive technologies, such as the one second auto-overclocking feature OC Genie, the SuperPipe cooling system that effectively drops the operating temperature by 50C, and 1>4 phase total DrMOS power supply design," MSI said in a related statement.

According to the validated CPU-Z screenie, Coolater ran a 245.39MHz bus speed with a 3926.2MHz frontside bus and a 1.672 vCore. And of course at nearly 5.4GHz, LN2 was involved in keeping the proc cool.

MSI's P55-GD80 streets for $210 on 'Egg.

Read More

Posted 09/25/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Before now, if you wanted a Core i7-based laptop, you could have one, but it had to be of the desktop variety, which meant contending with higher temps, lower battery life, and bulky form factors.

Then came this year's IDF, in which Intel introduced its Nehalem architecture in mobile form. It didn't take long for Dell to announce refreshed Studio 15 and Studio 17 laptops outfitted with the new chips, and now Asus and Sager are joining in on the fun.

Asus just introduced its M60J, a 16-inch notebook that comes configurable with either Intel's 1.6GHz Core i7 720QM or 1.73GHz Core i7 820QM. It also comes with a 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT240M GPU, up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 1TB of hard drive storage, optional Blu-ray, and more.

Sager, on the other hand, unveiled a 15.6-inch model (NP8690) built around the same processors, but ups the ante with a 1GB GeForce GTX 280M GPU, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB hard drive, and a 1080p display.

No word yet on how much Asus' M60J will cost or when it will start shipping. Sager, meanwhile, will start shipping its NP8690 in October starting at $1,800.

Read More

Posted 09/16/09 at 08:29:29 AM by Paul Lilly

Some sources are saying that, at least internally, Intel is talking about shipping one million Lynnfield processors for desktops by the end of 2009. Should Intel meet its goal, it would put the pressure on motherboard makers to keep up.

Asus and Gigabyte are each on pace to ship 400,000 P55-based mobos by the end of the year, leaving 200,000 units for other manufacturers to pick up the slack. MSI, ECS, and ASRock are expected to ship around that many mobos, but all it takes is for one manufacturer to miss its goal for there to be more CPUs than there are mobos.

Asus looks to be the most active for the rest of the year. According to company VP Joe Hsieh, Asus' expects to ship between 5.5 to 6 million motherboards in the third quarter, 6 million in the fourth, and 22 million total. Going forward, Asus says P55-based boards will account for 10 percent of all shipments.

Read More

Posted 09/11/09 at 12:43:34 PM by Paul Lilly

iBuyPower on Wednesday announced its new Paladin E-series Gaming PC built around Intel's "Lynnfield" processors and new P55 chipset. Three rigs in all -- Paladin E720, E780, and E870 -- come equipped with one of Intel's new socket 1156-based Core i7 800 series or Core i5 processors, but what iBuyPower really hopes will give it an edge over the competition is an optional "Power Drive" overclocking service.

iBuyPower will overclock your processor up to 10 percent for free (Power Drive Level 1), up to 20 percent for $49 (Level 2), and up to 30 percent for a dollar shy of a C-note (Level 3). Depending on which level you choose, you'll also need to configure compatible components iBuyPower says are certified for a particular OC (Gigabyte's GA-P55-UD6 is certified for a level 3 OC, whereas the GA-P55-UD3R is certified for level 1, for example).

 The Paladin E-series is available now starting out at $649.

Read More