Hasta La Gadget!

HP isn’t all about new notebooks today; the company also has a meaty new ENVY desktop along with a super-skinny Full HD LCD display. The HP ENVY Phoenix h9 offers a choice of Intel Ivy Bridge processors and either AMD or NVIDIA graphics, with a choice of regular hard-drive or SSD storage, and an illuminated case which the company claims looks “armor-plated” but which we reckon has a touch of the fish gills about it.

Still, you get internal space for three drives, with tool-free bays and re-configured cable routing for boosted airflow around the chassis. Liquid cooling is an option, as is an ExpressCache SSD for curtailed boot times and app loading, and there’s Beats Audio branding too.

As for the HP x2401 display, that comes in at 24-inches with Full HD resolution, but its real appeal is its thickness – or lack of. It measures a mere 11mm deep, and can be stripped of its easel desk-stand for wall mounting.

Ports include DisplayPort and HDMI, and HP sensibly quotes both a proper contrast ratio (5,000:1) along with the near-meaningless 10,000,000:1 dynamic ratio, something rival firms could definitely learn from. There’ll also be a business version, the HP L2401x.

The HP ENVY Phoenix m9 will go on sale October 26, priced from $899. Meanwhile, the HP x2401 will arrive November 7, priced at $249, while its commercial counterpart will be $10 more but land two days earlier.

HP ENVY Phoenix m9 PC gets super-slim 11mm x2401 Full HD display pairing is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA’s road into mobile may have just taken an unwanted (if temporary) detour. The company confirmed at week’s end that its Mobile Business Unit’s General Manager Mike Rayfield quietly left the company on August 24th to join another firm, although we don’t know whether he’s headed to a rival or in another direction altogether. NVIDIA also hasn’t yet said who replaces Rayfield at the helm. No matter who takes his place, the departure is a significant blow to the crew in Santa Clara: the executive had been heading mobile development at NVIDIA since 2005, before anyone really knew the company was interested in the handheld space, and helped make the Tegra name synonymous with fast Android phones and tablets like the One X and Nexus 7. There’s little doubt that more than a few competitors would like to have him onboard.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets

NVIDIA loses mobile division lead Mike Rayfield originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re building or upgrading a budget gaming rig, it’ll be hard to ignore the GeForce GTX 650 and 660. Whether or not NVIDIA’s new chipsets are worth the glance is another matter, and early reviews suggest that a sale depends on just which market you’re in. The GTX 660, by far the darling of the review crowd, competes solidly against the Radeon HD 7850 by outrunning AMD’s hardware in most situations while undercutting on the official price. Only a few have taken a look at the lower-end GTX 650, but it’s not as much of a clear-cut purchasing decision — the entry-level video often slots in between the performance of the Radeon HD 7750 and 7770 without the price edge of its bigger brother. Either card is much better value for the money than the GT 640, however, and looks to be a meaningful upgrade if you’re trading up from equivalent prior-generation gear.

Read – AnandTech (GTX 660)
Read – Benchmark Reviews (GTX 660)
Read – Bit-Tech (GTX 660)
Read – Guru 3D (GTX 650)
Read – HardOCP (GTX 660)
Read – Hot Hardware (GTX 660)
Read – PC Mag (GTX 660)
Read – PC Perspective (GTX 660)
Read – Tom’s Hardware (GTX 650 and 660)

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Peripherals

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 and 660 review roundup: hitting the sweet spot, sometimes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Sep 2012 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This morning we’re riding the wave out from the Apple event that occurred less than 24 hours ago, our complete collection of coverage available to you in our Apple portal. You can see our hands-on with the iPhone 5, iPod touch, and iPod nano as well as our iPhone 5 wrap-up and our iPod wrap-up too! And don’t forget the EarPods! Then it’s time to get Wii U ready for the whole world – launch time is upon us! Check our full launch title list for games, info on the new Nintendo TVii, and USA and Euro pricing information too.

NVIDIA has let loose some information on the GeForce GTX 660 and non-GeForce GTX 660, full excellence of NVIDIA’s GPU power at a low, low cost. NASA is speaking this week about their future with a manned lunar outpost. LG has teased a new device with Qualcomm power under the hood – perhaps the LG Optimus G with quad-core processing!

The iPhone 5 Lightning adapter may not be working with some accessories from the past – not great for analog audio hopefuls! Cricket now has the pre-paid iPhone 5 on its roster. You an now check out some iPhone 5 sample photos straight from Apple with its 8-megapixel camera.

You can now watch the entirety of the Apple iPhone 5 event in video form. Europe will be getting a lovely Lightning to microUSB adapter per their local standardization laws. Note that the iPhone 5 needs no NFC, wireless charging, or localized haptic feedback – believe it.

Intel has released information on its Android 4.1 Jelly Bean port for Medfield smartphones. The Mars rover known as Curiosity has nearly completed robot arm tests up on the red planet. The Nikon D600 DSLR is now official with a 24.3MP sensor and remote phone / tablet control.

SlashGear Morning Wrap-up: September 13th, 2012 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA has taken the wraps off of its latest Kepler graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 650 and GTX 660, bringing the CUDA-based GPUs to the lowest price so far. Prices are promised at around $109 for the GeForce GTX 650, which offers a 1GHz clock speed and 1GB of DDR5 memory, and around $229 for the GeForce GTX 660, which doubles the RAM and is the cheapest way to get NVIDIA’s GPU Boost for automatic overclocking.

That’s not to say that the GTX 650 can’t be overclocked, or indeed that it needs to be. Out of the box it can simultaneously drive four monitors for a total resolution of 5760 x 1080 with its 384 CUDA cores, but there’s a 6-pin power connector for those wanting to coax up to around 1.2GHz from the GPU.

Gamers, though, might want to step straight to the GTX 660 for the native GPU Boost. That works with the card’s 960 CUDA cores, and 192-bit memory channel (versus the 128-bit of the GTX 650) to drive Full HD monitors at some impressive frame rates compared to its predecessors; check out the benchmarks in the table below (click for a larger version):

Connectivity includes a Dual Link DVI-I, Dual Link DVI-D, HDMI, and a DisplayPort on the double-width GTX 660, and a Dual Link DVI-I, a Dual Link DVI-D, and a Mini HDMI on the double-width GTX 650. Expect cards from the usual suspects from today.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 and GTX 660 push Kepler to sub-$110 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.