For about 5 years, I had a Quantum Pioneer SG 2.1GB HDD, which I had to give to someone as a replacement, and that beauty is still working great in a very old computer, somewhere. In the meantime, I added a Seagate drive to my computer. This one was a 8.4GB one, but after that, hell broke loose. I jumped straight to a 80GB one, after less than a year I got it replaced, because it died, then I got a 250GB one, then a new computer with a 320GB drive, and now, less than a year after the last purchase, I am thinking about a 1TB drive, and I can't say I am upgrading frequently...


All the above has a close connection with the latest news regarding the HDD market, because this is what happens everywhere - HDDs are so cheap, that it's a pity not to grab more and more storage as you move on, since any new drive gets full pretty soon, no matter how large it may be. I know, there are people who can still live their lives with a "tiny" 40GB or 80GB drive, but I'll leave them aside.

According to IDC, worldwide HDD shipments are expected to grow, despite the economic uncertainty faced by individuals and businesses all around the planet. Even more, disk storage systems shipments will continue to grow until 2012, IDC estimating a 53% yearly growth. Then, it's the end of the world, of course, so no additional forecast.(heh, just joking!)

John Rydning, research director for hard disk drives at IDC, said "Disk drive OEMs are very aware of the different competing storage technologies that exist today, and will exist in the future. They will rightly shrug-off these competing technologies for a later day, choosing instead to capitalize on the healthy and profitable opportunities that lie ahead in the hard disk drive industry."

I know SSDs may seem the way of the future for some, but it will surely take years until they manage to surpass HDDs in volume sales. The reasons are obvious, so it seems I won't be forced to move to SSDs anytime soon, as it happened with the AGP bus, for example.

As time goes by, I look at the computing world, and see a change I currently don't enjoy at all - everything is going mobile. OK, I have nothing against mobility, but there's gotta be a limit, and when it gets down to gaming, I think this is something you do on your desktop computer, in the office(only during breaks, of course!) or in your living room, on the couch, using a gaming console, and now I just heard about the Radeon HD 3850, a pretty powerful video card, going mobile...


I know, I know, the picture above shows a desktop version of the HD 3850 card from Sapphire, but don't worry, you've got another thing comin', and it's an impressive one! Think about a laptop with a powerful CPU, a lot of memory, and a mobile version of the HD 3850 card, all inside a case that looks like... you'll see that right away, but first, let's check some interesting details, shall we?

The story goes like this - while AMD didn't say anything yet, Diamond Multimedia and Smooth Creations announced the Smooth Creations "Broodling" notebook, and its configuration includes the mobile HD 3850 card, so we're probably only a few days away from the official launch.


Just look at this beauty! Jim Saling, president and chief executive of Smooth Creations, said "We’ve been developing these custom painted cases for years and this notebook is testament of Smooth Creations commitment to bring a completely outside of the desktop approach as a notebook solution."

The idea is this - if they manage to bring the mobile HD 3850 really close to the desktop version, we'll finally see some decent gaming computers that won't chew away your battery in less than an hour. After all, we've all heard about mobile SLI or CrossFire setups, but I never saw one at work, and I don't even want to think what kind of cooking machine would such a notebook make!

"Today, Smooth Creations decided to merge and unite gamers, enthusiasts, and professionals with a single solution Mobile platform that is scalable, robust, and powerful. The next round of high performance notebooks could very possible be a Skulltrail Notebook. And we are already working on that," concluded Mario Gastelum, lead engineer at Diamond Multimedia.

RAM integrators are doing the best they can to provide high quality DDR3 modules, while lowering production costs and that should result into more affordable prices for end-users. However, the big players on the RAM market have also been racing for the highest standard frequencies lately. OCZ was the first to announce a 4GB 2000MHz DDR3 kit and now, after a month, Corsair is ready presents its response in the DDR3 market – the new Dominator 4GB kits clocked at 2000MHz .

The 2x2GB kits will integrate Corsair's improved DHX (Dual-path Heat Xchange) cooling solution that comes with both optimized fins and a dedicated PCB heat sink. OCZ has announced its 2GHz kits in May, but these still remain to be produced in sufficient quantities as the kits can only be found listed at online retailers and availability is still ambiguous. Apparently, the unbeatable price of €370.97 makes it pretty hard to be provided in good stocks.

Corsair, on the other hand, leaves us thinking. According to the Corsair's press release, the new 4GB Dominator DDR3 2000MHz kits will be priced at US$675 when they become available sometime in Q3 2008. Now that doesn’t quite make sense. If Corsair is planning to release these kits as true competitors for OCZ’s kits, why would they price them that high? OK, we know that the Dominator brand is well-known for its overclocking capabilities, but OCZ has also worked at improving this aspect in their modules and they keep prices pretty tight. Anyhow, the new Dominator kit will be showcased at this year's Computex, and I’m sure tests will show us if the Dominator kits are worth that extra money.

[tags]Corasir, DDR3, Dominator, module, OCZ, RAM[/tags]

Supercomputers prove to be very helpful in scientific experiments. A supercomputer is usually made of clusters upon clusters of smaller interconnected computers that work in parallel. If your current desktop PC has 2, 4 or 8 cores, supercomputers may combine more than 1,000 multi-core CPUs to provide enormous number-crunching power. However, there’s another possibility to constructing a super computer. Instead of using many CPUs, one may use the GPUs found in graphics cards. It is known that GPUs are superior to CPUs when it comes to complex calculations. That’s why Nvidia came up with CUDA, a technology that allows you to use up to 4 graphics cards that would provide roughly the same performance as a supercomputer cluster consisting of hundreds of PCs.

The ASTRA research group, part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, decided to extensively use the CUDA technology to develop new computational methods for tomography. In order to achieve this, they put together the FASTRA system containing 4 MSI 9800GX2 graphics cards (8 GPUs in total|) which are said to deliver the same performance as more than 300 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz processors. Of course you don’t see much improvement in games while using quad-SLI configurations, but that’s because the graphic drivers are not quite fully developed and the game engines are not optimized for such configurations. Otherwise, the CUDA does tomographic calculations very efficiently and consumes a lot less power than a supercomputer cluster.

Here is a list with the components used for the $4,000 FASTRA system:

• AMD Phenom 9850 processor + Scythe Infinity CPU cooler
• 4x MSI 9800GX2 graphics card
• 4x 2GB Corsair Twinx DDR2 PC6400 memory
• MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB HDD
• ThermalTake Toughpower 1500W Modular PSU
• Lian-Li PC-P80 Armorsuit case
• Windows XP 64-bit

The biggest problem of the system is that these four dual-GPU graphics cards are cramped together and generate quite a lot of heat. The FASTRA uses aircooling and with the sidepanel removed the GPUs run at 55°C in idle, 86°C under full load and 100°C under full load with the shaders 20% overclocked. Hey guys, how about using some water cooling system if not liquid nitrogen? Also check this demo clip for more details: