AMD, Seagate 6Gbps SATA

AMD and Seagate teamed up to demonstrate next-generation transfer speeds based on the latest Serial ATA specifications. The new interface termed as SATA 6Gbps promises to offer twice disk-to-host bandwidth over existing SATA 3Gbps standard. The demonstration was on Seagate's Barracuda Serial ATA-600 prototype hard drive

The demo prototype was based on Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drive that has a Serial ATA-300 interface. The SATA 6Gbps uses the same SATA 3Gbps connectors despite having fatter pipes.

The prototype Barracuda drive ran on AMD's chipset with a brand new storage controller. According to Seagate, the setup had hit a peak data rate of 589.09MB/s. AMD's south bridge SB750's successor will have full support for SATA 3.0 technology.

The specs include new goodness for a higher throughput peak by 200 percent. Recent destop drives pack 32MB NAND memory chips for supporting larger caches, which will boost the transfer speeds up to 250MB/s. The Solid State Drives on the other hand will move to 64NAND based on 34nm technology.

The SATA 3.0 standard is in final phase of development and isn't available on any product yet. However, Seagate expects to announce products compatible with SATA 3.0 by the year end.

AMD has announced the new ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card This is yet another high-end graphics card from ATI and the HD 4000 series card will be available for aproximate(Rs. 12,750).

ATI Radeon HD 4890 features an all new RV790 core built from 55nm fabrication process. AMD boasts that HD 4890 is capable of 1.36 TeraFLOPS of compute power, GDDR5 memory and capacity to hit 1GHz. The new HD 4890 supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with Shader Model 4.1 and OpenGL 3.0.

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 has 800 stream processors and the core runs at a clock speed of 850MHz. In this 55nm GPU bearing card, AMD has incorporated GDDR5 video memory standard that gives twice the data speed over GDDR3. The card uses 256-bit memory interface for 1GB GDDR5 memory running at a clock speed of 3900MHz.

This card will be part of AMD's" Dragon desktop Platform intended for high-end gaming and performance enthusiasts. This card will compete with Nvidia's top line GeForce GTX 285 and GTX 295 graphics cards."

This new HD 4000 series card supports Unified Video Decoder 2.0 for smoother and sharper HD video playback with vibrant colors. Along with support for HDMI port for video, this new card also brings HD Audio technologies 7.1 surround sound support.

AMD Intros Affordable Athlon X2 7850 CPU

AMD has been busy pushing its Phenom II platform with the recent launch of the Phenom II X4 955 BE processor. Today, AMD has introduced the new dual-core AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition processor. AMD has priced this 2.8GHz dual-core Athlon X2 processor (Rs. 3,500 approx.), targeting the mainstream computer market .

AMD Athlon X2 7850 is built using the same 65nm process technology used in quad-core Phenoms. The Athlon X2 7850 is clocked at 2.8GHz and has two cores disabled. However, it leaves 2MB L3 cache intact along with 512kb L2 Cache per core.

The Athlon X2 7850 competes with 45nm process technology built dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Pentium E5200. Compared with Intel E5200's Thermal Design Power rating of 65W, AMD's Athlon X2 7850 has 30W higher TDP rating of 95W - blame it on 65nm die. Since it is based on the Phenom architecture, this dual core 7850 BE lacks all the advancements offered in 45nm Phenom II line of processors.
AMD pushes Athlon X2 7850 as performance-per-dollar CPU for 'enhanced digital experience and tweaking the systems for making all latest games run.' This processor is ideally meant for enthusiasts looking for some casual gaming experience with their entry level graphics cards.

Cisco Spam & Virus Blocker

This dedicated anti-spam, antivirus and anti-phishing security appliance is an easy-to-use solution designed specifically for small businesses. Other spam security products require time-consuming manual administration to be fully effective and can't match the accuracy of the Cisco solution.

• Help protect your business against dangerous email threats
• Improve employee productivity by eliminating spam
• Reduce the time spent preventing spam and email threats
• Improve the performance of your network, servers and personal computers
by getting rid of unwanted emails
• Reduce your liability for spam and virus attacks

Cisco claims The Cisco Spam & Virus Blocker provides a complete solution
for peace of mind
• Hardware, software, updates and product support in a single package
• Continuous automatic updates
• Easy installation and use
• Effortless management