Acer ships Aspire M5 Ultrabook to UK in June, Ivy Bridge and Kepler chips in tow

Posted on 15/05/2012 by Jon Fingas

Acer made something of a splash when it trotted out its Timeline Ultra series of Ultrabooks at CES; those waves are just now hitting the shore with a full-on release in the UK under a tweaked Aspire M5 name. Both the 14- and 15-inch models are now known to be packing Intel's Ivy Bridge-era third-generation Core processors, and the "dedicated" video we heard about in January is NVIDIA's Kepler-based GeForce GT 640M, which we saw in the Timeline Ultra M3. Either new PC is still under 20mm (0.8 inches) thick with the option of an SSD, like the M3, but slapping the M5 badge on top means a much narrower display bezel, a backlit keyboard and other more upscale touches that show where your money's going. Picking the 15-inch model adds an optical drive along with a keypad for number-crunching. Mum's the word on exact specs and that all-important pricing, but those questions will be answered by the time the M5 hits British shops in mid-June. Now all that's left is to know when the new Aspire reaches the other side of the Atlantic.

Continue reading Acer ships Aspire M5 Ultrabook to UK in June, Ivy Bridge and Kepler chips in tow

Acer ships Aspire M5 Ultrabook to UK in June, Ivy Bridge and Kepler chips in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 10:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA outs GeForce GTX 670 GPU: it’s Kepler without the mortgage

Posted on 10/05/2012 by Daniel Cooper

This'll be old news for some lucky folks, but NVIDIA has just unveiled the GeForce GTX 670 graphics card. It aims to bring Kepler to gamers who don't have off-shore bank accounts, with a price tag of $399 (or £329 in the UK, and €329 in Europe). What sacrifices will be made to reach that bracket, compared to the flagship GTX 680? A loss of 192 CUDA cores, for starters, plus a slightly slower 915MHz base clock speed, which will no doubt have an impact on benchmarks -- we'll do a review round-up shortly to figure out just how much. Nevertheless, you'll still get the same 28nm chip architecture and 2GB of DDR5 RAM, along with NVIDIA's GPU Boost technology that autonomously overclocks the processor to make use of available headroom. In terms of official performance claims, NVIDIA has chosen to compare its benchmarks to AMD's high-end Radeon HD 7950 and boasts that the GTX 670 comes out on top every time by a margin of 18 to 49 percent. Of course, the war of words is little more than performance art at this point, so stay tuned for independent tests.

Meanwhile, gaming-friendly manufacturers like Origin and Maingear have declared that they'll carry the card alongside the 690 in its desktop offerings -- you can learn more about that after the jump.

Gallery: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Press Gallery

Continue reading NVIDIA outs GeForce GTX 670 GPU: it's Kepler without the mortgage

NVIDIA outs GeForce GTX 670 GPU: it's Kepler without the mortgage originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Packard Bell EasyNote LV, TV laptops bring Ivy Bridge to speed-hungry Europeans

Posted on 04/05/2012 by Jon Fingas

Most laptops being updated to Intel's Ivy Bridge processors have come from international brands, so it may be some relief to European PC buyers that Acer's local Packard Bell badge has made the leap as well. The 15.6-inch EasyNote TV and 17.3-inch LV will each use the new 22-nanometer processors both to push performance that little bit farther as well as get a middling five hours of battery life. NVIDIA graphics in GeForce GT 620M and 630M flavors will spruce up the gaming side, however, and Packard Bell is delivering a 20 percent more responsive multi-touch trackpad, dedicated music / social keys and a bamboo-like lid pattern to add a little dose of style. The duo will surface in Europe during June at prices starting from €499 ($656). Acer has sometimes brought Packard Bell PCs to the US as roughly equivalent Gateway models and vice versa, so Americans shouldn't be surprised if they get counterpart laptops before long.

Packard Bell EasyNote LV, TV laptops bring Ivy Bridge to speed-hungry Europeans originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 06:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA: there’s nothing ‘Ultra’ about Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks unless you add Kepler

Posted on 23/04/2012 by Sharif Sakr

This is a vaguely awkward message for NVIDIA to be putting out. On one hand, the company is best buddies with Intel and is hoping to see its next-gen GPUs bundled with a large portion of the Ivy Bridge notebooks that will ship this year. But to reach that target, it must risk irking Chipzilla by emphasizing the limitations of Ivy Bridge's integrated graphics. That's exactly what happened at a recent presentation, when NVIDIA told us there'll be "nothing Ultra" about the performance of a regular Ivy Bridge Ultrabook because the integrated HD 4000 graphics will only handle around 43 percent of current games. By contrast, if you add in a GeForce GT 640M you'll find that 100 percent of current games are playable with frame rates over 30fps and high detail settings, including Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City, Crysis 2 and many others. If you leave the lightweight Ultrabook spec behind and combine Ivy Bridge with a GT 670M GPU then you can go even higher -- as we just discovered in our review of the MSI's GT70 gaming laptop. Fortunately, Intel was pretty magnanimous about HD 4000 when it briefed us, and readily accepted that enthusiasts will still want discrete graphics, so we don't imagine the slide above will cause too many hurt feelings.

NVIDIA: there's nothing 'Ultra' about Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks unless you add Kepler originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everything old is new again: NVIDIA rebrands Fermi-based GT 520 and 510 into 600-series

Posted on 08/04/2012 by Sean Buckley

Everything new is old again: NVIDIA rebrands Fermi-based GT 520 and 510 into 600-series

NVIDIA may have trotted out a brand new beast, ripe with fresh Kepler architecture, but that doesn't mean it put Fermi to bed. Allow us to introduce you to the GT 520 and the GT 510, or as they now prefer to be called, the GeForce GT 620 and GeForce 605, respectively. These OEM GPUs have traded half of their memory and a few clock speed tweaks for OpenGL 4.2 support and a low-end position in the firm's new 600-series. Despite their very Kepler-esque numbering (and NVIDIA's website placing them in the same "product family" as the flagship GTX 680), Tom's Hardware says the firm's Bryan Del Rizzo confirmed the 605 and 620 are Fermi-based graphics cards. Then again, not all cousins share the same surname. File this under "extended family" and call it a day.

Everything old is new again: NVIDIA rebrands Fermi-based GT 520 and 510 into 600-series originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Apr 2012 06:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Origin PC EON15-S and EON17-S gaming laptops available now, priced from $1,525

Posted on 08/04/2012 by Zach Honig

In the market for a beastly portable gaming rig that won't break the bank? Origin PC today announced availability of its EON15-S and EON17-S gaming laptops, with pricing starting at $1,525 and $1,576, respectively. You'll of course still be able to hand over an arm and a leg depending on how you opt to build out your system, but considering that the base model is priced at nearly half the amount its predecessor was when it was announced this time last year, we imagine additions will wield a softer blow than they did in 2011. Both systems include Intel HM77 Ivy Bridge chipsets, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M, 670M or 675M graphics with Optimus power-conservation technology, and a 5.1 ONKYO surround sound system. Both cases offer unique designs, with black, red, silver or custom finishes, and a colorful backlit keyboard. What else could you possibly need? Perhaps a press release and a few more pictures -- and we've got both for you right here.

Gallery: Origin PC EON17-S