Hasta La Gadget!

The GHz Edition was supposed to deliver a significant mid-cycle performance bump to AMD’s flagship 7970, without any attendant rise in cost. Instead, according to AnandTech, it looks like third-party vendors are looking to exploit the GE has a chance to max out every other spec in addition to the updated silicon and then charge a premium. Sapphire’s new Toxic card is a case in point — a 6GB double-helping of VRAM and a “Lethal” BIOS mode that takes base clock up to 1150MHz and memory clock to 6.4GHz (compared to 6GHz on the stock card). Those who can splutter up $699 will surely love it, but it’s no substitute for the $499 upgrade that AMD originally intended.

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

First GHz Edition Radeon HD 7970 hits shelves, throws $699 wrench into AMD’s pricing strategy originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Check out this newly introduced graphics card from Sapphire, the HD 7970 6GB TOXIC Edition. Powered by a 28nm GPU, the card is packed with 2048 Stream Processors, a 384-bit memory interface, a core clock of 1050MHz (1100MHz Boost Clock) and a 6GB of GDDR5 memory set @ 6000MHz. Not only that, the card also features Sapphire’s Vapor-X dual-fan cooling solution and has 1x dual-link DVI-I, 1x single-link DVI-D, 1x HDMI and 2x mini DisplayPort outputs. Pricing info is still unknown at the moment. [Sapphire]

Us humans have been quick to embrace digital technology for preserving our memories, but we’ve forgotten that most of our storage won’t last for more than a few decades; when a hard drive loses its magnetism or an optical disc rots, it’s useless. French nuclear waste manager ANDRA wants to make sure that at least some information can survive even if humanity itself is gone — a million or more years, to be exact. By using two fused disk platters made from sapphire with data written in a microscope-readable platinum, the agency hopes to have drives that will keep humming along short of a catastrophe. The current technology wouldn’t hold reams of data — about 80,000 minuscule pages’ worth on two platters — but it could be vital for ANDRA, which wants to warn successive generations (and species) of radioactivity that might last for eons. Even if the institution mostly has that pragmatic purpose in mind, though, it’s acutely aware of the archeological role these €25,000 ($30,598) drives could serve once leaders settle on the final languages and below-ground locations at an unspecified point in the considerably nearer future. We’re just crossing our fingers that our archived internet rants can survive when the inevitable bloody war wipes out humanity and the apes take over.

[Image credit: SKB]

Filed under: Storage, Science

France’s ANDRA developing a million-year hard drive, we hope our badly-written blogs live in perpetuity originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sapphire hits back by showing off their newest graphics card, the HD 7870 FleX Edition. Powered by a 28nm GPU, the card packs 1280 Stream Processors, a 256-bit memory interface, a core clock of 1000MHz and a 2GB of GDDR5 memory set @ 4800MHz. Not to mention, the card also features the company’s latest Dual-X cooling system and has 1x dual-link DVI, 1x single-link DVI-D, 1x HDMI and 1x DisplayPort outputs. Pricing and release date are still unknown at the moment. [Sapphire]