Tech News
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Super X-Fi Entering New Market after Historic Win at CES 2019
10 ‘Best-of’ Accolades amid Overwhelming Response from Hundreds of Media Trigger Huge Interest from OEM Partners
SINGAPORE - 14 January 2019 - Creative Technology crossed the finish line at CES 2019 achieving its best awards showing ever, with Super X-Fi Headphone Holography scoring 10 awards from the world’s leading consumer electronics media in a convincing manner.
These awards are:- AVS Forum ‘Best of CES 2019’
- TechRadar Awards 2019 ‘CES Top Pick’
- Overclock ‘Best of CES 2019’
- ‘SoundGuys Best of CES Award’
- Eteknix ‘Best of CES 2019’
- Android Authority ‘Best Audio of CES 2019’
- PC World ‘Best of CES 2019’ (for SXFI AIR)
- PC World ‘Best of CES 2019’ (for SXFI THEATER)
- Aktualne ‘Best of CES 2019’
- Tech Buyer’s Guide ‘Best of CES 2019 (Personal Audio)’
“10 awards?! Wow!! What to say... I’m speechless! We are truly, truly honored and incredibly ecstatic! A big ‘Thank you’ to all the supportive media. The honor really belongs to the Super X-Fi team. They have worked insanely hard to achieve this unheard-of and ‘near-perfect’ score of 10 awards for a single technology. It’s like winning an unprecedented number of Oscars for a single movie”, said Sim Wong Hoo, CEO of Creative Technology.
This breakthrough technology, which accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of recreating the soundstage of a multi-speaker surround system in a pair of headphones, has truly captured the imagination of many at CES 2019. This innovation has evidently attained far-reaching endorsement, which is personified by the rare achievement of one technology single-handedly winning these many awards at CES, where typically even the most inventive of innovations win less than a handful of awards.
Word had spread fast amongst the visitors following the worldwide launch of Super X-Fi, and the Creative showcase room was inundated with walk-in requests for the demo sessions, which were mostly at full house right up to the last day of the event. Many major news media, such as CNN, ABC, Yahoo! News, Die Welt, Czech News Center, Straits Times, Business Times and Channel NewsAsia attended and were as blown away as everybody else.
Amongst the many audio enthusiasts and experts who attended, most admitted that while they were initially skeptical on the veracity of Super X-Fi’s claims; after the demo sessions, they found themselves making remarks like ‘simply mind-blowing’, ‘easily the best demo of all’, ‘I’m not going back to normal headphone audio’, ‘I’m getting goosebumps’, ‘This is witchcraft!’. Some of them came wanting to debunk what they felt were hyperbolic claims, but admitted after the demo that these claims were in fact ‘understated’.
The strong interest was not lost on other players in the audio industry, with visits from a few major players.
“Others are trying to enter this space and are copying our marketing ideas. As imitation is the best form of flattery, I welcome all these attempts. Actually, such buzz serves to educate the market, telling more people headphone audio is wrong or unnatural. And only Super X-Fi can give you the real thing here and now,” said Sim.
Super X-Fi Enters OEM Market
In the immediate aftermath, Creative announced that it will be entering the OEM market aiming to bring Super X-Fi solutions to a much larger pool of users.
“This unprecedented sweep of awards amid overwhelmingly positive response from all the media attendees and OEM partners has accelerated our plans to enter the OEM market immediately. In fact, many large OEM partners are pushing us to integrate Super X-Fi onto their products as soon as possible. This will be an exciting new phase for us, as the OEM market is potentially hundreds of times larger than the market for Creative’s Super X-Fi products,” added Sim.
For more information on Super X-Fi, visit www.creative.com/sxfi. -
Back from CES 2019 - Fun show but damn!
As many of you know CES 2019 has concluded and in midst of the mega tv's and 8K resolutions there was some good stuff to see.
Keep in mind I am usually taking part in the "CES Sideshow" and use the event more to make contacts than to report on what I see. I stopped doing that several years ago for a variety of reasons.
The largest of them being the lack of ROI from me trying to report on everything in real time. CNET does a really good job at finding the good stuff, I know this because people text and post on my socials saying "Hey did you see this??". *shakes head*
It is also a nod to how fuxX0ring difficult it is to run the "CES Sideshow". Not only do I have to deal with setting up a meeting schedule but, Also dealing with reschedules because someone "more important" wants the timeslot I already reserved, Also making sure my meetings are in the same location and finally, dealing with "others" that think it is ok to show up late (or early) and take away from my scheduled meeting.
Personally I find the last one highly disrespectful and the couple times it happened I walked out of the meeting.
Oh ya, I had a new one this year. Get this:
I setup a meeting, get two confirmations of the meeting, fill out the proper paper work and told I'm set. However, when I show up its not on their calendar and the only way I get let is is showing the email. I then got followed around during the presentation and asked numerous times if my company name is correct. Lazy marketing company? or internal sabotage, you decide.Anyhow, I digress
Over the next week I'll be rolling out some articles of the things I found most interesting at CES 2019. Most will be old news at this point but, at least the techutainment community didn't sample any of these articles to make their video.
Oh and finally, Darren and I will be recording the January Podcast this week and should be able to get an episode out before the end of the month. It will be the CES 2019 wrap up and won't be spread over four episodes like last year.
Stay Tuned!
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G.SKILL Trident Z Royal DDR4-3200 16GB Memory Kit Review @ ThinkComputers
Ohh Shiny!
G.SKILL was one of the first companies to come out with RGB DDR4 modules and they were quite a hit. Their Trident Z RGB kits are still some of the best RGB kits available today and have a sleek and sexy look that you can’t help but admire. How could G.SKILL possibly top their Trident Z RGB kits? Well they showed everyone just how they were going to do that at Computex this year with the introduction of the Trident Z Royal DDR4 memory. This new memory features the same heatspreader design, but the heatspreaders are made of polished aluminum that just looks amazing. Topping off the heatspreaders is a crystalline light bar that is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Today we are checking out the F4-3200C16D-16GTRS kit which is a 16GB (2 x 8GB) kit running at 3200 MHz, with timings of 16-18-18-38 at 1.35v. Is this going to be the must-have RGB memory for 2018? Read on as we find out!
These are some pretty sweet modules and have NO business being in a gaming computer. The style is completely off and the gold motherboards for the Chinese market were soooo last season (thrice removed)
But, hey they are pretty and should look good covered in frost.
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Nvidia Targeted With Class Action Lawsuits Over Crypto Crash @ Toms Hardware
I caught this posted over at Toms. Have to admit I'm surprised it too investors this long before taking action.
On a related note the topic of NVIDIA and their "stumble" was covered on the Hardware Asylum Podcast main show Episode 94 and I might suggest you check it out.
According to the Complaint, the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. NVIDIA touted its ability to monitor the cryptocurrency market and make rapid changes to its business as necessary. The Company claimed to be “masters at managing our channel, and we understand the channel very well.” NVIDIA also claimed to the market that any drop off in demand for its GPUs amongst cryptocurrency miners would not negatively impact the Company’s business because of strong demand for GPUs from the gaming market. Based on these facts, the Company’s public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about NVIDIA, investors suffered damages.
While I totally agree I'm not sure what anyone is expecting to get from this. Investing is a risk, one day you could have your money safely stored in stock the next day a fire could destroy the entire factory along with the design archives. It could be from mismanagement of fire suppressors or some angry employee who lost his red stapler. .
While the article suggests that the inventory excess has been "worked through" by now that really doesn't mean much. From the side of NVIDIA they would be indicating that the chips have been sold. However, that doesn't help the excess inventory in the market or the snobby owners who are still upset that they paid over a grand for their card that has virtually $0 value now.
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AIDA64 v5.99 is released
AIDA 64 is a benchmark I use when testing memory modules but it can be used for so much more. In fact it is activly being updated to support many of the latest hardware releases and is super easy to use.
Be sure to check the program out!
http://www.aida64.com/whatsnewNew features & improvements of AIDA64 v5.99- AVX-512 accelerated benchmarks for Intel "Cascade Lake" processors
- Fake nVIDIA video cards detection
- Cooler Master MasterKeys MK750 and SteelSeries Apex M750 RGB LED keyboard support
- Matrix Orbital GTT and RoboPeak RPUSBDisp LCD support
- Cooler Master MasterMouse MM530 and SteelSeries Rival 600 RGB LED mouse support
- Aqua Computer D5 Next and Quadro sensor support
- Improvements for Intel Z390 chipset based motherboards
- Corsair ST100 RGB LED headset stand support
- SanDisk X600 SSD support
- Advanced support for LSI RAID controllers
- 32 processor groups support
- WDDM 2.5 support
- SteelSeries QcK Prism RGB LED mousepad support
- GPU details for AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP and Radeon RX 590
- GPU details for nVIDIA GeForce RTX and Quadro RTX Series -
Funky Kit Review - Adata XPG SX8200 240GB M.2 SDD
ADATA. now there is a name I haven't heard in a Loooonngg time.
Well, that isn't true, I saw their booth at Computex and had a nice chuckle at their "Shuriken" logo on the gamer hardware. Its almost like they stole the idea from my other website Ninjalane.
I sometimes think I should bring that site back, everyone knows me as Mr. Ninjalane but I like the logo better at Hardware Asylum. Decisions, Decision.
Much like picking your next M.2 SSD. Of course if you want to believe a guy who plays the "I'm on YouTube, get out of my" card when at trade shows.
If you want a super fast boot drive at an amazingly affordable price, then take a serious look at the ADATA XPG SX8200 SSD. You won’t find anything that will beat it … especially under $80!
Can't argue with 80 bux, or a guy who plays the "I'm on YouTube, get out of my way" card
. Be sure to check out the review or tool around this site and let me know if Ninjalane should make a comeback tour. -
Crucial P1 500GB M.2 Type 2280 SSD Review @ Madshrimps
I was super excited when Crucial annoucned their first NVMe based M.2 drive. It finally ment we could get NVMe performance without having to bow to the Samsung engine or pay through the nose for enterprise ready drives from Intel.
It also marked a time when NVMe controllers were finally being opening up to other drive makers.
Judging by the transfer speeds, we are dealing with a decent mainstream SSD at quite low sale prices, thanks to the newer QLC technology. As we have seen before with TLC SSDs, the P1 does rely on the RAM cache and SLC cache for delivering higher read/write performance but as soon as this fills up, the overall speeds will drop. The performance drop will be mostly visible when we do write very large files to the drive at once, a scenario not frequently found when used in consumer workstations.
Be sure to check out our review of the Crucial P1. The performance wasn't draw dropping but for the price, performance and storage capacity you can't complain.
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KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X @ TechPowerUp
It is really great that we are still getting "new" GTX 1060 cards after the launch of the 20-Series. This review over at TechPowerUp features the KFA2 GTX 1060 with GDDR5X memory which will give the GPU more memory bandwidth when compared with the older version.
We bring you the world's first GeForce GTX 1060 GDDR5X review. NVIDIA has recently released a new GTX 1060 variant, which uses faster GDDR5X chips, instead of GDDR5. While out of the box speeds are identical, we found a massive 44% memory overclocking potential, which lifts the card to new performance levels.
As the quote indicates, the GPU isn't any faster but the memory is and THAT is what makes time travel possiable, or at least your TimeSpy scores better.
Also keep in mind that there are much better KFA2 cards on the market for those looking for something a little more raw and unchained.
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Thermaltake Pacific R1 Plus DDR4 Memory Lighting Kit
Taipei, Taiwan-December 7th, 2018- Thermaltake releases Pacific R1 Plus DDR4 Memory Lighting Kit to offer an easy solution for coloring up memory modules. The RGB memory cover for DDR4 memory module that supports motherboards with 4 DIMM channels features 36 addressable LEDs with 16.8 million colors can be controlled with Patented TT RGB PLUS software and synchronizes with ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, AsRock 5V motherboard RGB software. With user-friendly engineered design, R1 can be easily clipped on to the DIMM channel bracket, therefore, users do not need to have all four RAM sticks installed to place R1 and enjoy the RGB effects. It is also compatible with most generations of memory modules on the market, including DDR4, DDR3, and DDR2. The wide range of compatibility benefits most PC DIY users. Pacific R1 Plus DDR4 Memory Lighting Kit offers an easy way for your memory module to outshine the rest!
Thermaltake TT RGB PLUS Ecosystem
TT RGB PLUS Ecosystem is the intelligent lighting system for PCs that combines the most advanced addressable LED lighting with Thermaltake’s patented TT RGB PLUS Software, Razor Chroma, and Amazon Alexa Voice Service. TT RGB PLUS ecosystem provides nearly unlimited possibilities for playing with colors, synchronizing lights to games, music, CPU temperatures, Razer Chroma supported gaming peripherals or other TT RGB PLUS products, including case fans, CPU/VGA waterblocks, AIO CPU coolers, PSUs, LED strips, gaming keyboards, headsets, mice and mouse pads. The patented TT RGB PLUS software allows users to change the light modes, colors, speeds, brightness, fan speeds via TT AI Voice Control and Amazon Alexa Voice Service.For more details on the Thermaltake Pacific R1 Plus DDR4 Memory Lighting Kit, please visit: https://www.thermaltake.com/Cooler/Liquid_Cooler_/Others/C_00003373/Pacific_R1_Plus_DDR4_Memory_Lighting_Kit/design.htm
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Antec Torque @ TechPowerUp
Several years ago there was a casemod that was designed after the MV Agusta F4. It was an amazing mod that basically took a standard case and split it in the middle horizontally from the back forward. They left the front intact and started bending the case making it taller and exposing the internals.
The case was then painted up and became a very popular design that many have replicated. Including Antec.
The Antec Torque is the company's take on open air cases. It doubles down on a compact but elaborate look with the usual material mix focusing on aluminium and tempered glass.
I'm all for open air cases and when you can add style that is just icing on the cake.
