AMD is continuing its work on the new GPU generation codenamed ‘Sea Islands’. The new series is prognosticated to be released in the coming winter. All the products with this GPU will be branded Radeon 8000. AMD manufacturers claim that their new graphic processing units will be 40% more efficient due to the implemented advanced technologies. There is not so much news about the future GPU architecture, although cardinal changes are barely possible.Sea Islands chips will be equipped with 5.1 billion transistors as compared with the current 4.3 billion items applied in the products. This augmentation will facilitate the increment of efficiency. The chips will be developed according to the already tried-and-proven 28 nm technological requirements. The increase of transistors is not as large due to the adherence to the ascribed norms. It should be underlined that the implementation of the old technologies does not imply the considerable warming up of the chips; the developments …
Taking into account the increasing number of cases when it’s impossible to install highly efficient air coolers on mini-ITX motherboards, Corsair has developed a universal low-profile liquid cooler. Entitled Hydro Series H5 SF, the unit shows compatibility with the majority of small-sized platforms for Intel LGA1366/115x and AMD FM1/FM2/AM2/AM3 sockets. Besides, this model is able to manage with up to 150 W of thermal power.
Taking into account an ever increasing demand for USB 3.0 interfaces, SilverStone has elaborated a dedicated PCI expansion card, entitled ECU01. The card is designed in a low-profile form-factor with the support for PCI Express 2.0 x2 bus. It features a pair of 19-contact USB 3.0 sockets, each of which offers two USB 3.0 ports.