Thursday, October 10, 2013

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Nvidia forced to cut its prices

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 04:33 AM PDT

Nvidia has been forced to cut its prices on several of its leading graphics cards soon after the announcement AMD’s Radeon R9 280X.

According to Digitimes, Nvidia has offered price cuts for its more popular GTX 660 and GTX 650Ti Boost cards.  It said it will  will soon release an upgraded GTX 760.

The new prices are:  GeForce GTX 780 will cost $649; GeForce GTX 770, $399; GeForce GTX 760, $249; GeForce GTX 660, $179; GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB, $149; and the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB, $129

All this seems to be on the back of AMD announcing pricing for its R9 and R7 graphics cards which are much lower than competing Nvidia gear.

Digitimes thinks that this could be the beginning of a price war as Nvidia will reduce its graphics card prices again in November,  The theory is that Nvidia will want to make the  GTX 760, 770 and 780 more competitive going into Christmas.

What it is waiting for is for AMD announces official R290 and R290X pricing that should happen soon. Fudzilla claims that the R290X will end up with a $699 price tag.

AMD releases two new Radeons

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 04:32 AM PDT

AMD has released two Radeon GPUs as it attempts to extend its control over the gaming  graphics market.

The AMD Radeon R9 270X and AMD Radeon R9 280X, GPUs have both been designed with gamers in mind. The Radeon R9 270X graphics card is targeted for 1080p gaming and the Radeon R9 280X graphics card is designed for 2560x1440 resolution and loaded with 3GB of memory.

They both use Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, and Mantle, which is technology developed by AMD to harness the GCN-powered cores of both PCs and consoles.

Mantle-enabled games are supposed connect to the base-code of the GCN architecture and get hardware optimisation benefits. Radeon R9 Series graphics cards also have UltraHD (4K) and AMD Eyefinity.

Matt Skynner, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Graphics Business Unit, AMD said that the combo of GCN architecture and Mantle, unlocked graphics performance was entrenched in the DNA of all AMD-powered GPUs.

He said that there were also plans to install the same sort of technology in all AMD APUs too.

The Radeon R9 280X, which was codenamed Tahiti XT and will cost $299 while the Radeon R9 270X is based Tahiti LE will retail for $199. 

Valve confirms it will have AMD GPUs inside its Steam Boxes

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 03:40 AM PDT

Valve has confirmed that its new Steam Machine game consoles will use AMD graphics chips and not just Nvidia GPUs.

Prototypes of Valve's Steam Machine consoles, which were seen last week used Intel CPUs and graphics chips made by Nvidia. But a spokesman for Valve Software has confirmed that future designs will use AMD graphics.

At the time of the launch there was a confusing statement from Steam. It said that the graphics hardware which had been selected for the first wave of Steam Machine prototypes included a variety of Nvidia cards. However it warned that it was not indication that Steam Machines are Nvidia-only.

Now it seems that it has clarified that position by saying that there will be Steam Machines with graphics hardware made by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.

Valve has worked closely with all three of these companies on optimising their hardware for SteamOS, and will continue to do so into the near future, the spokesman said

What is still not clear is if the Steam Machines would actually use AMD's microprocessors, or just still to Intel's creations.

The Steam Machines are Valve's attempt to create a working console. It has also released a large number of different specs with varying hardware.

The company thinks that there will be a significant percentage of Steam users would actually want to purchase—those who want plenty of performance in a high-end living-room package. Others will want budget machines, or super quiet versions.

When the specs came out, many were surprised that AMD was not included because of its strong presence in the graphics and games market. AMD chips had also been under the bonnet of both the Sony and Microsoft consoles.

This led PC World to get onto the blower and ask AMD why it been excluded from the Steam Machine programme.

AMD confirmed that it had been actively engaged with Valve on these products and campaigns. Valve has not named the AMD GPUs which will be used. 

General Electric has a cunning plan for t'internet

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 02:56 AM PDT

General Electric has a scheme to build and expand a machine-to-machine industrial internet.

Yesterday the outfit named networking giant Cisco and fashion bag maker Intel as new partners for the project.

GE said it would also use AT&T's wireless network to let industrial equipment connect to cloud computing services linked to customers and suppliers.

The plan has slowly been coming out since June when GE announced that it was using Amazon Web Services, the cloud arm of e-commerce giant Amazon.com, to process data gathered from industrial machines.

The next state of the plan is to work with Chipzilla to embed cloud-based, standardised interfaces within a data management system called Predix. Predix was developed by Accenture and Pivotal Labs.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt said that the company wanted to develop more predictive software, which can be loaded into hardware with sensors that constantly measure performance.

This will mean that customers can see major productivity gains and tackle inefficiencies with a factory or across an entire company.

GE predicts that setting up an industrial Internet could save $20 billion a year, although it did not say who would make the savings.

However it is chanting the same mantra which Intel has been muttering about the "internet of things," although in this case it is looking at its industrial rather than consumer uses. 

Assange explains why he turned down Benedict Cumberbatch

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 02:26 AM PDT

Wikileaks's main man,  Julian Assange has explained in a long rambling letter why he did not allow a meeting with Benedict Cumberbatch, before the filming on the new The Fifth Estate flick.

The letter, written to Cumberbatch, found its way to the Guardian. In it Assange said that while he would enjoy meeting Cumberbatch, he did not think that Fifth Estate would be a good film.

Basically he was concerned that it would be a film which did not show him a positive light because it was based on "a deceitful book" by someone who has a vendetta against him.

There were dozens of positive books about WikiLeaks, but Dreamworks decided to base its script on a book which was so toxic it was distributed to US bases to discourage military personnel from communicating with Wikileaks, Assange wrote.

Assange said that the film was going to "bury good people doing good work" and "smother the truthful version of events, at a time when the truth is most in demand".

"I believe that you are a decent person, who would not naturally wish to harm good people in dire situations," Assange told Cumberbatch. "But you will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it."

He urged him to pull out of the project and to "consider the consequences" of being involved in project that vilifies and marginalises "a living political refugee to the benefit of an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state".

 According to those in the know, Cumberbatch managed to do a really good impersonation of Assange in the movie. 

 

HP’s fortunes waxing, CEO says

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 01:24 AM PDT

The CEO of HP told analysts yesterday that her business is on the mend.

Meg Whitman said that falls in its revenue last year will be stemmed in financial year 2013, showing some growth.

HP has suffered because it formerly relied on sales of printers and of PCs – both markets are currently in the doldrums.

Whitman told the Wall Street analysts that she wasn’t going to spin off parts of the firm nor would she start another restructuring.  The last restructure saw nearly 30,000 people losing their jobs.

HP shares (tick: HPQ) rose on Wall Street after the announcement, to stand at $22.65 at close of play.

PC sales continue to slump

Posted: 10 Oct 2013 12:56 AM PDT

The third quarter was always a boom period for PC manufacturers but it looks as though the mould is broken as Gartner released details of shipments during the period.

Shipments fell by 8.6 percent in Q3 2013, compared to the same period last yeaar, amounting to 80.3 million units.

Gartner said this is the sixth consecutive quarter that sales have fallen worldwide.

Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said that a move from PCs to tablets continued to erode the installed base of PC in both emerging and maturing markets.

Lenovo was the number one player in the market, followed by Hewlett Packard and Dell.

But the Chinese marketwas weak while the Americas and EMEA were not so badly affected, as Gartner’s table shows, below.
PC Sales Q3 2013

Sales in the US amounted to 16.1 million units in the quarter, the second consecutive quarter of growth. Ms Kitagawa said: “The US market may have passed the worst declining stage, which started in 2010. The shrinking installed base of PCs has also passed the steepest decline phase because the structural change has progressed fairly quickly. Tablets will continue to impact the PC market but the US will see a more moderate decrease rather than a steep decline in the next two years.”
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